There are not many similes in The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake because the novel is told in the voice of the seventh-grader Maleeka Madison—who has a very straight forward way of speaking. The similes she does use normally relate to something that she understands such as ballerinas and candies.

In Chapter 7 there is only one simile on Page 34, line two, when she says her teacher "Miss Saunders is just a big mouth who likes to throw her weight around and to treat everybody like they are some broken pot she's got to patch up."

She uses three more similes in Chapter 8. On page 39, line 19, the narrator explains that her best friend Sweets goes to a school for bright girls with girls that "looked like they come out of a magazine." She says she had good enough grades to go to the school herself, but didn't feel comfortable among girls with "skin the color of potato chips and cashews and Mary Jane candies."

On page 40, line 4, the narrator starts telling her friend Sweets that she has the right colour skin to attend the posh school. Sweets, however, tells her it's not about skin colour, "It's about how you feel about who you are that counts. 'Hummph,' she said twirling around on her toes like a ballerina with bad feet.'"

When Maleeka has her hair cut on page 45, line 18m she's asked to show some attitude so she starts walking around snapping her fingers until a woman comes over and says the best way to show attitude is to shake your hips hard. "I start putting my hips from side to side, taking long steps and putting my arms out like I'm on a runway someplace."