Guest Post from Author Kathleen Burkinshaw Why does a book about an event that happened 50 plus years ago have anything to do with today? Well, I believe that using historical fiction books for children/young adult readers illuminates a time period and a culture that may only be mentioned briefly in one paragraph of a history textbook....
Guest post from Patricia Newman with Donna Rosenblum and Mehrdokht Amini
I usually write about nonfiction conservation topics that empower children to act as global citizens. When Donna Rosenblum, Executive Director of Reason2Smile, approached me with an idea for a book about the importance of education, I saw another way to empower young readers to act.
Approximately 262 million children worldwide did not attend school in 2017. Neema’s Reason to Smile illustrator Mehrdokht Amini comes from Iran, a country where access to education is not necessarily a right.
Donna and Mehrdokht know first-hand the challenges faced by children from extreme poverty or worn-torn countries. I thought you’d like to hear their messages from the front lines.
One of the best resources to explore the world of children’s literature with kids AND adults is none other than KidLit TV. Julie Gribble, a two Emmy Award nominee, a multi-award-winning writer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and producer, founded KidLit TV to help inspire children to learn and read. She has assembled an all-star team of diverse award-winning writers, illustrators, teachers, filmmakers, and reading specialists who work together to create fun new ways to reinforce an appreciation of reading that children will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
The diverse KidLit TV team also supports the We Need Diverse Books and Multicultural Children’s Book Day initiatives by encouraging the children’s literature community to create more books that reflect the diversity of our society.
KidLit TV is a winner of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, the Norton Juster Award for Devotion to Literacy, and one of the American Library Association’s Great Websites For Kids. KLTV is available in over 600,000 schools worldwide via our website and video distribution partners.
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
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.
Now more than ever…
A message of hope, compassion, empathy, and understanding is needed.
Now more than ever, children need to see themselves reflected in the pages of the books they read. Readers of all ages need to be able to “read their world” to both see themselves, and those are who different, whether by culture, religion, sexual orientation, special needs or ethnicity.
Now more than ever, we need to come together as a nation of beautifully diverse people.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD) is proud to offer an initiative and holiday that encourages discovery, hope, acceptance, inclusion, kindness, and exploration via the pages of diverse children’s literature.