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Author: Valarie Budayr

Read Your World / Articles posted by Valarie Budayr (Page 59)

World Languages for our Multicultural World

First Global Challenge, an international competition, brought teen-agers from over 150 countries around the world to Washington, D.C. this summer. Students collaborated across countries and borders to build robots which would reduce water contamination. A keynote speaker observed that in the future there would be many opportunities for budding scientists from around the world to work together for peaceful purposes.

This is the world that we need to prepare our children for. Regardless of their career choices or where they may live, it is more probable than ever that they will be communicating and working with people from diverse language and cultural backgrounds.

How do we best prepare our children for success in the multilingual, multicultural 21st century?

Judy Martialay

Let’s give them an early start learning a foreign language. One can learn a language at any age, but children who start early have more years to become truly proficient and to have a marketable skill.

Dr. Amita Roy Shah is an award-winning author who has written the delightful multicultural children’s picture books It’s Time for Holi! and Lights, Camera, Diwali! with a mission of teaching, kids, parents and educators more about the Indian culture. She has spent her career in multicultural education and curriculum development and also the founder of  HybridParenting.organ online platform that is dedicated to investing in the cultural well-being of children.

Dr. Amita Shah

Dr. Amita created Hybrid Parenting to empower parents to foster multicultural competence in their children. Multicultural competence is the ability to understand, effectively communicate, and interact with people from diverse cultures. This skill promotes higher level critical thinking skills and helps children develop multiple perspectives of the world.

 

It all started with a question from a little boy; a question about an iconic landmark that most adults recognize easily.

Author Carole P. Roman fondly remembers the day she and her grandson were spending time together on a family trip to Las Vegas. As a curious four-year old, Carole’s grandson spotted a replica of the Eiffel Tower and asked what it was. After explaining what the iconic Paris, France landmark was, she realized that kids needed a colorful and easy way to learn about the world around them. In that moment the idea for what is now a 50+ book collection was born.

“I wanted a way to explain cultures, provide gentle lessons, show examples of dreaming big to young readers to they don’t feel limited in what they can achieve,” Carole noted. “I also wanted to provide books that acted as introductions to cultures, religions, ethnic foods, historic times and even period dress. It was an exciting new journey that was vastly different than current role, but one I was thrilled to embark on nonetheless.”

As a very success business owner, Carole soon found herself “reinventing” her career path in her sixties and taking on the new role of children’s book author. Since that first inspiration moment with her grandson, Carole has self-published five different series-totaling 50+ books.

Read Your World: A Guide to Multicultural Children’s Books for Parents and Educators // Our Fundraising Book

By now kids are back to school and teachers and librarians are beginning another year of sometimes one of the hardest jobs on earth.

Read Your World has always worked very hard to support teachers with free resources, free classroom kits, and free diverse books, but now we want to give YOU a way to help them as well! In 2017, we published its first-ever ebook filled with multicultural book resources and recommendations.

 

Read Your World: A Guide to Multicultural Children’s Books for Parents and Educators is a “Best Of” list of diversity books lists for children contributed by 20 bloggers and 2 authors:

Alex Baugh of Randomly Reading

Amanda Boyarshinov of The Educators’ Spin On It

Erica Clark of What Do We Do All Day?

Rebecca Flansburg of Frantic Mommy

Anna Geiger of The Measured Mom

Svenja Gernand of Colours of Us

Michelle Goetzl of Books My Kids Read

Jennifer Hughes of The Jenny Evolution

MaryAnne Kochenderfer of Mama Smiles

Marie-Claude Leroux of Marie Pastiche

Katie Logonauts of The Logonauts

Stephanie Meade of InCultureParent

Katie Meadows of Youth Literature Reviews

Leanna Guillén Mora of All Done Monkey

Becky Morales of Kid World Citizen

Carrie Pericola of Crafty Moms Share

Jodie Rodriguez of Growing Book by Book

Melissa Taylor of Imagination Soup

Mia Wenjen of PragmaticMom 

Uma Krishnaswami, author

Elsa Marston, author

{guest post from Myron Campbell-Founder of the Differences Foundation}

Since I became an author, I seem to get the same questions and statements thrown my way…the main one being, “How did you become an author?” Or “What you are doing for the kids that not too many African American males are doing.”

I get these two the most, however, there are more. As I mention every time I speak to a group of people I never saw myself as an author. When I created my children’s book series The Adventures of Melvin Walker it happened by mistake. Honestly, it was the man upstairs plans for this to happen. These were stories I told my children at night before bed. We would pick up every night right where we left off the day before.

One night my wife says, “you should put your recorder on and record yourself.” I was a little hesitate at doing that. I didn’t want to sound crazy. So, I took her advice and recorded myself. Fifteen minutes later what I recorded ended up being the first 3 pages of my first book Melvin Goes To The Ballpark.