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Author Visits, Book review
December 28, 2018

Guest post from Terri Birnbaum -co-founder of The RealGirls Revolution

Over the course of six years, and with the immense talent of many artists, and partnerships with some amazing organizations, a collection of illustrated girls became a 50-page coloring book we titled, RealGirls. Our story began when my daughter, Lydia, was eight, she and I were sewing clothes for her Barbies and had trouble making the dresses fit well on their tiny waists.

In frustration, I said, “Why don’t they just make real girls?” And with that, we began our long journey producing a book that celebrates girls’ unique and beautiful differences.

First, I reached out to community groups, student associations, art galleries, and college art programs, to meet with artists who were equally passionate about creating an alternative to the limited, and highly stereotyped, princesses and dolls that saturate our mainstream popular culture. Artists identified things they felt weren’t represented, and created girls that incorporated those qualities, or sketched friends or family members they felt embodied those qualities. They also used the opportunity to invest their artwork with visual messages addressing things that were important to them like, socioeconomic concerns, education, and cultural identity. One artist created a girl with a huge smile, understated clothing, and books in her arms, another created a girl wearing a traditional, culturally-specific scarf. These are just two examples of how artists chose to communicate pride in education and cultural identity.

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Author Visits, Book review, diversity in children’s books, Guest Posts
December 20, 2018

Guest post from the co-founder of Globe Smart Kids, Anne Glick

No better way to start a new year than with Multicultural Children’s Book Day right around the corner! Excited to be a returning author sponsor with 10 diverse friendship stories, all bundled in a virtual library: One Globe Kids

Stories about relatable others lay a foundation for exploration

The idea for One Globe Kids was born one afternoon while I read the children’s book Joyce’s Day to my then 3-year-old son in our apartment in New York City. The book was printed in South Africa in 1974 and given to me as a newborn present by my Aunt Joan in 1975. Its photos and simple text made Joyce’s day in South Africa relatable to me, a young, white girl living in small-town Illinois.

From beginning foreign language study in middle school to studying and working abroad, I strongly feel that my preparation for life in a diverse globalized world can be traced back to the simple curiosity I had for Joyce and her family.

I went looking for more “Joyce-like” books for my son Sebastian and found several beautiful, but basic, mostly illustrated, books about children in other countries. I did not find the personal, intimate, rounded stories that would make these children more familiar than foreign for him. And thus began my journey to make the international story series that I want to share with my kids, Sebastian and his two brothers, Willem and Josef.

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Book review, Guest Posts, Multicultural Booklist
December 16, 2018

Raising Race Conscious Children’s favorite children’s books…and what we say when we read them

by Sachi Feris and Lori Riddick

At Raising Race Conscious Children, people often ask us what exact words to use to talk about a variety of subjects around race and other identity-markers. We have created this post for Multicultural Children’s Book Day, sharing some of our favorite book titles along with the words we use when we read. That said, there is no one “right” thing to say. What we say will differ based on our children’s racial identities and interests—but we love to inspire adults to practice “the words they use” through the world of children’s literature. When we read a book dozens of times to a child, we can try on different words and engage in the practice of race consciousness.

Race Consciousness Book Picks

What we say when we read:

“I love how her aunt always has her hair in braids which is a really important part of our culture as Black people. I think she looks beautiful. And it reminds me how beautiful you look when you wear your hair in braids. I love how when the aunt goes to learn about another country and culture, she always brings something back for the little girl…but she also always keeps her hair in braids. I really like that she is proud of who she is and always remembers who she is because she keeps her hair in braids.”

-Lori

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Author Visits, Book review, Diverse Book Review
December 13, 2018

{Guest Post by Author Sonia Panigrahy}

On a Saturday afternoon, I found myself rushing through Manhattan in preparation for a trip to Chicago to visit my best friend. I was searching for a gift for her five-year-old daughter. I opened the doors to a lovely two-storied children’s bookstore. I skimmed the shelves and struggled to find a book with a main female character that was not a princess. Seeking the help of an employee, I request a girl’s adventure book. She pulled out a book and described the plot, prompting me to purchase the book without having the time to read it. I figured the little girl and I would read it for the first time together in Chicago.

We were in our pajamas in Chicago on the sofa as I cracked open this new adventure story. The main character has a dream where an adventure awaits her. I turn the pages to find that the adventure involves the main female character cleaning and cooking. What struck me in a very painful way was that no adventure book for boys would include cleaning and cooking. Why is it that children’s books are delineated into boys’ vs. girls’ stories that restrict what they can and cannot become? Why don’t books have storylines where pronouns can be interchangeable so that kids can just be kids?

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Author Visits, Book review, Giveaway
December 8, 2018

Guest Post by author Padma Venkatraman

I’m twenty and in graduate school when I first hear the expression “food fights.”

I refuse to picture what my classmate, Heinz, has described: children throwing food on one another, for “fun.” As a young woman who’s left behind her not-exactly-wealthy single mother and journeyed alone overseas, I cannot even begin to comprehend this. Instead, my brain conjures up an Oliver-Twist scenario.

“You mean you were hungry because they didn’t give you enough food, so you protested?” I ask.

Raucous laughter surrounds me. The two others in my study group (both young white men from well-to-do backgrounds, like Heinz), explain that no, food fights are when kids fling food at one another.

“Cafeteria food’s tasteless,” they tell me. “Not worth eating.”  

I’m stunned into silence. I don’t know how to explain why the concept of throwing away something edible – wasting food for the sake of play – shocks me to the core.

Now, decades after that incident, the idea of a food fight still appalls me.  

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