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The Monkey King’s Daughter®

By Todd DeBonis

The Monkey King's Daughter

The Monkey King’s Daughter® is the powerful, heartwarming, coming-of-age story of Meilin, a contemporary Chinese-American teenage girl, tightly wrapped in high adventure and fantastic Chinese mythological settings.

The Monkey Kings Daughter

Steeped in the universal tenants of Compassion, Humility, Loyalty, Balance and Honor, The Monkey King’s Daughter® delivers solid family core-values and a new female action hero & role model for a multicultural world.

The Monkey King’s Daughter® is all about empowerment through the realization of self-worth, deed and valor. It’s Meilin’s journey of personal growth, amid the trials of extraordinary circumstance and adversity, that drives each adventure.

{guest post from author Charlotte Riggle}

**some of these links are affiliate links

If you hop into your favorite bookstore this time of year, you’ll see shelves and displays full of picture books that feature bunnies and baskets and eggs. The books tend to be brightly colored, shiny, and sweet, like the foil-wrapped candies that fill so many Easter baskets. And I find the books, like the candies, insipid and ultimately unsatisfying.

What do I want in an Easter picture book? Start with people. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with books about rabbits and ducks and chicks and lambs. I have more than a few of them in my collection.

Live Oak Media
Hear Diversity Here: The Importance of Using Multicultural
Books and Audio with Young Children

While it may be difficult to find, diversity in children’s books does exist and Live Oak Media can help in several ways. Children benefit from listening to rich language and readalongs provide that experience, especially for those children who do not have adults in their lives with time or ability to read to them. Our collections of award-winning readalongs include many books that not only provide authentic cultural experiences for children, but also encourage literacy skill-building for emergent readers across a broad age spectrum, particularly in the areas of vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, print awareness, and visual literacy.

Why do culturally diverse readalongs from Live Oak Media benefit young readers?

• Because our children are growing up in a global society and they need to experience what happens around the world
● Because our children come in a variety of colors
● Because our children live in many different types of families
● Because all of our children need to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror of the books they read, the images they see, and audio they hear
● Because our children need to see the world through the window of the books they read, the images they see, and the audio they hear

Live Oak Media readalongs reinforce for children that words (in English) are read from left to right, that words on the page represent the spoken language they are hearing, and that sentences are read with inflection and are set apart by capitalization and punctuation. In addition, picture book readalongs support the Common Core State Standards’ directive that primary students use illustrations to describe details of the text, such as characters, settings, or events. Check our website to discover more about the many ways in which picture book readalongs foster literacy growth.

At Hear Diversity Here Live Oak Media’s lists of culturally authentic picture book read-alongs offer accurate accents by narrators, as well as culturally authentic music and sound effects to enhance the listening experience. The thematic lists will help you get started with readalongs that augment your lessons plans as well as provide your students with many hours of pleasurable reading/listening.

Live Oak Media is the award-winning audio publisher of distinctive read-along recordings of classic and popular children’s literature for ages 3-12. Our recordings have received three Odyssey Awards, the American Library Association’s (ALA) award for Excellence in Audiobook Production, including the inaugural award in 2008; the Audie Award for Distinguished Achievement in Production; three Grammy® Awards; and numerous Audie Awards, ALA Notable Children’s Recordings, and outstanding reviews. As a small, family-owned company, we are dedicated to providing our young listeners with meaningful reading and listening experiences.

 

 

 

It’s Here! The charming, funny story of Ruby LaRue,an eleven-year-old girl with an enthusiastic zest for life,
and her shy, brilliant friend, Eleanor Bandaranaike.

Ruby and Eleanor live in the quaint town of Paris, New Hampshire, located at the base of Sugar Mountain, an exclusive ski resort in the White Mountains. Every winter, Paris comes alive with “Outers,” wealthy families from out of town who own ski condos and wear designer clothes, luxuries that Ruby and Eleanor (and most of the year-round residents of Paris) can’t afford.

So many amazing multicultural authors stepped forward to show their support during the 2016 Multicultural Children’s Book Day, and Dania Santana was one.

Dania’s was an Author Sponsor for our wildly successful online event and her book, La Familia Cool, is a wonderful bi-lingual children’s book helps create awareness about the #Latino family with #bilingual #multicultural characters.

La Familia Cool represents the Latino family in the United States, with its variety of colors, customs and gastronomy. Through the website and #bilingual book we tell the story of the Cools, a close-knit nuclear family which is also very close to the extended family, in which sons and daughters along with nieces and nephews share with the siblinghood characteristic to Hispanic families. The characters of the family are multiethnic, multicultural and bilingual, and the children are first generation American, with origins that link them to different countries of Latin America. The main members of La Familia Cool are: MamiCool, PapiCool, AbiCool, TitoCool, PepeCool and AbueCool, they live together and are always doing family activities. However, like all Latino families, La Familia Cool is also part of an extended family and the relationship among the cousins: SisyCool, TonyCool, LoliCool, KikeCool, PattyCool, MayaCool and BetoCool. All of them learn from one another and the particular characteristics of their parent’s countries origin.

la familia cool

Looking for a picture book being read aloud online? There are several people reading picture books for kids on YouTube and elsewhere, but did you know there is a place you can go to find a library of picture books read out loud by their authors? There is! KidLit TV publishes videos of authors reading their books twice a month! KidLit TV has a fantastic read aloud library.

In this article, we’re sharing four KidLit TV Read Out Loud selections you should be sure to check out and share with your kids!

We did it!

Our third Multicultural Children’s Book Day: #ReadYourWorld {January 27th} was a HUGE success again!! Over 170+ bloggers ,  21 major sponsors, over 70 Author Sponsors, a boatload of generous book donators and many, many authors, teachers, parents, readers and librarians showed up to read, visit and enjoy the multicultural book titles, discussions and book-related activities!

Here are some highlights from our 2016 event, but first, some thoughts from the Multicultural Children’s Book Day Team

Valarie Budayr (Co-founder):

Valarie Budayr2

I never imagined that I’d ever be a part of a global awareness project that benefits children to the tune of millions of people. It’s an incredible gift to be able to give back via a project which has everyone participating at their highest good. It’s also truly incredible that this event has achieved that while not singling anyone out for their differences, but celebrating them as an integral and cornerstone part of our community. We’ve created this incredible moment which validates and gratifies those who need to be seen and heard while connecting the world to each other through books.

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