I’m thrilled to announce that the 2021 Multicultural Children’s Book Day poster was created by Nat Iwata. It’s free and downloadable! Our entire gallery of posters is here.
Nat Iwata also the illustrator for Sumo Joe! Learn more about Nat Iwata on his website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD) is an online and offline celebration that attracts thousands of supporters, educators, parents, caregivers, book reviewers, and quality authors and publishers who join forces to shine the spotlight on diversity in children’s and YA literature.
Celebrated annually on the last Friday in January, this global non-profit offers a plethora of free resources, teaching tools, booklists, downloads, and a year-around initiative to get multicultural and diverse books into the hands of young readers.
To date, we have donated over 8,000 books to underserved kids, classrooms, and organizations, and that number continues to climb.
Our Criteria for “Multicultural” or “Diverse” Children’s Books:
- Books that contain characters of color as well as main characters that represent a minority point of view.
- Books that are written by an author of diversity or color from their perspective. Search #ownvoices to discover diverse books written by diverse authors.
- Books that share ideas, stories, and information about cultures, race, religion, language, and traditions.
- These books can be non-fiction but still written in a way that kids will find entertaining and informative.
- Books that embrace special needs or even “hidden disabilities” like ADHD, ADD, and anxiety.
Want to get involved?
Be a sponsor! Authors, illustrators, and publishers! Multicultural Children’s Book Day sponsorships are available!
Get a free diverse book to review! The sign-up deadline to sign up to be a reviewer is December 15, 2020. You can sign up for more than one book and you can specify the age range of the book. Your books will be shipped in Nov/Dec of 2020.
Sign up here:
A Plethora of Free Diversity Book Resources and Tools
Since 2017, MCBD has created free downloadable Classroom Kits that contain a booklist, a special poster, on and offline resources, and activities that can be used as teaching tools in the classroom. Each year, we focus on a specific theme that we feel is relevant or a topic that needs attention and discussion:
- 2017 Teacher/Classroom Kit: Kindness
- 2018 Teacher/Classroom Kit: Empathy: Everyone Is Welcome Here
- 2019 Teacher/Classroom Kit: Poverty Does not Discriminate | Understanding Poverty in America
- 2020 Teacher/Classroom Kit: Physical and Developmental Challenges: Understand and Celebrate our Differences
- 2021 Teacher/Classroom Kit: Activism and Activists: We Can All Be Champions of Change
- 2021 Homeschooling Families Kit: World Travel from your Homeschool Table
Other Free Resources
Diversity Book List Resource: A List of Lists
FREE Diverse Books for Classrooms Project: A year-round initiative, MCBD relies on authors and publishers to donate diverse books with the goal of getting these multicultural books into classrooms. Monies raised during the January celebration and other fundraising initiatives are used to cover postage to get these books to their destination.
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My books:
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me