Multicultural Children’s Book Day
January 27, 2014
Our mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these of books into classrooms and libraries.
Children’s reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom have teamed up to create an ambitious (and much needed) national event. On January 27th, Jump into a Book and Pragmatic Mom will be presenting the first ever Multicultural Children’s Book Day as a way of celebrating diversity in children’s books.
Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day, Mia and Valarie are on a mission to change all of that. Their mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. Another goal of this exciting event is create a compilation of books and favorite reads that will provide not only a new reading list for the winter, but also a way to expose brilliant books to families, teachers, and libraries.
Meet your hosts and co-creators of Multicultural Children’s Book Day.
Valarie Budayr of Jump Into a Book is a best-selling children’s author of The Fox Diaries: The Year the Foxes Came to our Garden and The Ultimate Guide To Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. She is passionate about making kid’s books come alive and is proud to be a play and reading advocate. Valarie’s mission is to inspire children,families, and communities, to experience and create our world together while having fun.
Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom is a Harvard grad with a love of children’s books (picture books through YA) and sneaking in teachable moments in art, science, math, foreign language and language arts. Mia is passionate about getting kids excited about reading and helping parents ensure that their child is successful at school.
Here are some ways you can help us celebrate Multicultural Children’s Book Day
- Have children bring in their favorite multicultural book to school on this day and share it with the class.
- Have a special Multicultural Children’s Book Day book read aloud time.
- Create a Multicultural Children’s Book Day display around the classroom or library.
- Read Around the Continents and Countries. Great resources list at JumpIntoaBook.com and PragmaticMom.com
- Visit The Multicultural Children’s Book Day page at Jump Into a Book.
- Visit our Multicultural Books for Kids Pinterest Board for more reading ideas.
- Do a craft or activity presented on Jump Into a Book or Pragmatic Mom which relates to the many cultures in our world.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Read Around the Continents: South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe.
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days
Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani
Grandfather Tang’s Story: Storytelling with Tangrams
Bloggers Please Join Us!
We’d love to get the amazing blogging community to join us in sharing their favorite multicultural children’s book. If you’d like to share a post — and it can be old one from your archive — please link up! If you have time, please visit a few of the links and leave a friendly comment or show them some social media love by sharing their post.
Please also visit our collaborative Pinterest board, Multicultural Books for Kids, to see more great books!
Thanks so much!
If you would like more information, or have questions regarding Multicultural Children’s Book Day, please contact Valarie Budayr at Valarie@AudreyPress.com or Mia Wenjen at pragmaticmomblog@gmail.com
Thank You for Your Support!
Follow PragmaticMom’s board Multicultural Books for Kids on Pinterest.
My books:
BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 is a book that I created to highlight books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as the characters in their books.
This sounds like a great idea. You can count me in.
Thanks so much Alex! And do please feel free to link up old posts. I am trying to get my linky fixed. Turns out my subscription to Linky Tools 2.0 just expired!
Great idea, Valarie and Mia. You might want to write a blog for http://www.leeandlow.com to promote it.
Hi Giora,
That’s a great idea. You are reminding me to reach out to Jason Low.
Love this! I am on the road now but will link up tomorrow!!
Thanks Jill,
My linky just stopped working because I didn’t realize my subscription to Linky Tools 2.o just expired but I just paid so hopefully it will be up again today.
What a great idea! I write about kids books on my multi-cultural themed blog. I will see if I have a good post that will fit well here. I’ll go and read other’s posts in the meanwhile…
Thanks so much Amanda! We’d love your old posts and thanks for reading the posts on the Linky (which I am trying to get fixed right now).
Love this idea! Yeah to you ladies for putting it together. I\\\’d love to support in anyway that I can!
Thanks so much Jodie!!! We really appreciate your support on your wonderful blog GrowingBookbyBook.com
I’ve added the date to our calendar. We have a number of books that would work, but am going to check the pinterest board for more ideas.
Thanks so much Heather!!! We really appreciate your participation!
Oh no, it tells me the Linky Tools subscription expired. List not available. I will leave the link for a post about two wonderful picture books from Lee & Low as my url. Thank you for doing this! It is a great idea.
Hi Jennifer,
Oh no! I just realized that my Linky 2.0 subscription expired today so I just renewed and that should make the linky work again. I just paid — right now — and emailed Linky 2.0 to expedite my linky. So sorry about that!
Love this! Thank you for creating and organizing this much needed celebration! I don\’t know how to link up my blog posts onto your blog, but here is one I wrote about non-Caucasian princess books:www.mama-lady-books.com/blog.html. I\’m in the process of writing more blog postings about multicultural children\’s books!
Thanks so much Stephanie! I will link your post for you! Thanks for the link!
That’s amazing. Children should be aware of diversity to foster equality at an early age.
Thanks so much Aras! We totally agree with you! Books are powerful that way!
Absolutely wonderful idea! Just want to point out that it is a bit confusing that you have the date as January 27, 2013. Do you mean 2014?
Hi Roberta,
Oops, typo. It should be 2014. Let me correct that right now. Thanks so much for letting me know!
So great! I was planning a post that would be perfect to link up! I will have to just on it and then I’ll be back.
Yay Ann! Thanks for linking up!
I asked the school librarian if we could have an event celebrating Multicultural Picture Books on Jan 27th! Here’s a blog post of two of my favorite multicultural picture books. They are so powerful.
Thanks so much Gladys! We really appreciate your support and I am looking forward to reading your posts!!
Are you two reading the Children’s Book Council’s Diversity blog?
I’m happy to join in!
Hi Caroline,
Thanks for the heads up on the Children’s Book Council’s Diversity blog! Heading there right now and thank you SO MUCH for joining our Multicultural Children’s Book Day!!!
I am so excited for this. This is a much needed blog hop – especially within the homeschooling group. Some homeschoolers can be so limited in their scope and study. The only way we can learn more about ourselves and others is to branch out and learn about other cultures, religions, etc. You want to raise global citizens – Mormons should celebrate Hanukkah, Atheists should attend church, Americans should celebrate Chinese New Year – and so forth. Raising a generation of Children who are better educated about the global differences in all of us – will make this a better more productive world.
You are amazing. This is such a fabulous idea.
Hi Lisa,
I’m so excited that you will be joining us! We are so excited to see the book favorites that everyone will have! I think we are all the more richer for learning more about other cultures too! I know my kids would love to celebrate Jewish holidays — they talk about that constantly!
So great to hear about this and so timely too! I am currently teaching a course entitled \\\”Using Multicultural Children\\\’s Books to Promote Socio-Emotional Learning\\\” which I have offered to our higher degree students this semester. I shall definitely blog about this and share with my students (who are mostly teachers here in Singapore). Erik (of this kid reviews books) alerted me to this wonderful event. Thanks for hosting this!
Hi Myra,
Thanks so much for joining us! I’ll add you to our blogroll!
I’m so glad I found your link on the the Nerdy Book website. This is great! Count me in. I happened to review a multicultural book on my site today, “Desmund and the Very Mean Word,” by Archbishop Desmund Tutu. I have several other multicultural books reviewed an waiting for release, so I will publish one on Jan. 27, the day I review MG/YA. Thank you so much!
Hi Patricia,
It’s so nice to meet you! We are thrilled to have you join us! I’ll add you to the blog roll of participating bloggers! Thanks so much!!
Thank you Patricia!
We are so excited to have you join us! Your book sounds wonderful!!!
Thank you for this! I’m so excited to help share your event and get others to participate!
My most recent post, linked above, links backs to this post and your fabulous list.
Thanks so much Katie! I’ll make sure you are added to our blogroll! We are thrilled that you are joining us. Thank you!!
Umm is it too late to link up some young adult books I reviewed in the past? I really did want to participate in multicultural children’s book day
Hi Sveta,
Please link up your YA multicultural book posts! Thanks so much for joining us!!