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Author: Valarie Budayr

Read Your World / Articles posted by Valarie Budayr (Page 80)

Sherri Graves Smith is an award-winning author of children’s books and a popular, motivational speaker. She currently has three picture book series with more than 50 titles in print: the Lil’ Sherri series, the Game Day Rules series, and a series of counting and alphabet books.Sherri Graves Smith

Is My Cup Empty? (Mascot Books, 2014), the first book in the Lil’ Sherri series, is about hope, optimism, and perseverance. Sherri’s inspiration for this series is very personal and best understood in her own words, which also provide some biographical information: “Many lessons instilled during my childhood prepared me for the adversity that I faced as an adult, including books that I read such as Happiness is a Warm Puppy and The Little Engine That Could. The lessons in my book stem from my outlook on life after battling Stage IV cancer for the past eight years. I was only 36 years old when I was diagnosed. I found out that the cancer had metastasized one week after returning from my honeymoon, and I found myself in a position where all of my hopes, dreams, and plans were empty.”

13 yr. old Garrett Spencer has 1 good leg, no friends, never been to school and lives with his family in a cave. The family has moved to Shiloh’s Island, known for pirates, treasure caves and legendary sea monsters. Shortly after they arrive, Garrett rescues the legendary feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl from a hurricane and certain death.Together they must battle the bullies of the island – survive multiple attacks by Sea Dragons and find the treasure so they can save his father’s career and remain together.
 Tales of Davy Jones

Please join us on January 27th as we celebrate multicultural, diverse and inclusive books for kids for Multicultural Children’s Book Day. To help us with our mission to get diversity books into the hands of children, we are giving away a TON of books.

Please join us for our Twitter party where we will be discussing children’s books and giving away packages of diversity books for kids every 5 minutes!

Multicultural Children’s Book Day Twitter Party

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Win Packages of Diversity Books for Kids

Wednesday, January 27th

9:00 pm -10 pm EST

Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld

Please welcome our guest blogger, author Janet Wong! Chinese New Year 2016 is coming up on February 8th, so we asked Janet to share her Lunar New Year family traditions. If you want to learn more, Janet has listed resources including books, videos and links at the bottom.

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Ice Cubes at the Door: A Survey of Lunar New Year Traditions

I grew up celebrating the lunar new year mainly with the Chinese traditions of my father and his parents—firecrackers at midnight, the Chinatown parade, red envelopes, eating fish for wealth and lo hon jai, the monk’s noodle dish made with 18 different vegetables, for health. What I remember most, though, was our whole family frantically cleaning the house the evening before, to get rid of all the dirt and bad luck of the past year and make room for good luck in the new year. This illustration by Yangsook Choi from our book This Next New Year perfectly captures the frenzy:

Janet Wong illustration by Yangsook Choi from our book This Next New Year