fiction - What are some rich but respectful ways to describe various skin colors?

Say I have a kid's book with children of varying skin tones: a boy with British/Germanic background, a girl with Indian parents in the middle point of Indian skin tones, a girl with a Germanic background mother and a Turkish father, and an African-American boy.

What are some good words to use to describe those skin tones without using the generic and not actually that descriptive black, white, and tan? Also, avoiding the use of food to describe darker skin tones, as this association with food is sometimes considered offensive.

I'm looking for vocabulary, mostly.

Answer

Since it is a children's book, you can't use "umber" or "sienna" or complicated color words. (Heck, I still don't know what "khaki" is!) And you said you don't want to use food. That means you need to think of things that 1) are always (roughly) the same color, and 2) are well-known to children. Shades of brown are going to be tough. Random ideas that come to mind:

Animals. This could be used to comi-tragic effect. For example, if there are best friends, one of whom is unusually pale and the other unusually dark, the bigoted kids could call them the "skunkers." Or, the two friends might be proud of their contrasting skin colors, and call themselves "the panda pair" or "team zebra." (Or "team orca," then go beat the crap out of the bigots. But I guess that's not a children's book.) Other colored animals: brown mouse, brown bear, black bear, polar bear (white!), black crow, light brown mountain lion, black jaguar, black Lab (dog).

Cartoon/TV characters. Charlie Brown (very fair) and Dora the Explorer (light brown) come to mind. Not my area of expertise, and your book could get dated quickly if you choose badly.

Building materials. Fresh sidewalk (lily white), asphalt (very black, but don't use "tar" since historically that was a slur), pine wood (light brown or tanned white), oak table (medium brown).

People groups. This obviously requires the readers to know something about other people groups. But "black as a Nigerian fieldhand" is probably as dark a skin tone as exists, and "white as a Swedish gamer in December" is probably as light a skin tone as exists (absent albinos). Most middle-schoolers would probably figure those out. The in-between tones will be tough, especially since most people groups with in-between tones have a wide range of tones. So, "Arab brown" and "Mexican brown" are meaningless. "Northern Italian" and "Southern Italian" would be meaningful to most adult readers, at least as tropes, but most middle-schoolers won't know the (supposed) difference.

In short, I think you'll have to approach describing skin color from a variety of angles, if getting the correct tone/shading is important to your story. Which begs the question: Is it? If not, then don't stress about it. Just say "light brown," "brown," "dark brown," etc. and let the readers colorize your characters with their imaginations.