Valarie Budayar, author of the popular Jump into a Book website, wants to help kids and families discover diverse and cultural kid-lit this Friday, January 27, with Multicultural Children's Book Day.
She and Mia Wenjen are co-founders of this special day, and Scholastic is thrilled to be an official sponsor. Check out Valarie's special guest post on what it's about how you can celebrate Multicultural Children's Book Day.
Get started with some top book picks from Scholastic:
- Under the Same Sun by Sharon Robinson
- The Granddaughter Necklace by Sharon Dennis Wyeth
- The Case for Loving by Selina Alko, illustrated by Sean Qualls
- Elephant in the Dark by Mina Javaherbin
- Zen Socks by Jon J. Muth
- Emma is on the Air #1: Big News by Ida Siegal
- Moving Target series by Christina Diaz Gonzales
- Making Friends with Billy Wong by Augusta Scattergood
- Unidentified Suburban Object by Mike Jung
- Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks, Gita Varadarajan
- The Hero Two Doors Down by Sharon Robinson
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Happy Multicultural Children's Book Day!
January 27th is the day when we celebrate all of our diversity, and multicultural uniqueness showcased in the pages of our books. Four and half years ago, Mia Wenjen of the Pragmatic Mom blog and I founded this event in the hopes of creating resources for parents and teachers to find the children's books that reflected them best as well as creating a window to the world we live in through stories and literacy.
When children can relate to the characters they are reading about they are more likely to become avid and active readers. Books are a great safety net to discover and explore our world and all the various perspectives and experiences there are. We celebrate this great day of literature in a variety of ways and invite you to join along and celebrate with us.
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How can you participate?
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Another main objective of Multicultural Children's Book Day is to put as many books into the hands of kids, teachers, and parents as possible.
1.) Get social! Join our Twitter party (Friday, January 27 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT)
Win 1 of 12 Book Bundles! Giving away Book Bundles every 6 minutes! Twitter Party Friday, January 27th 9 pm to 10 pm EST Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld We will be discussing the state of children’s book publishing and giving away diversity book bundles every six minutes! We invite EVERYONE to join us: authors, publishers, parents, caregivers, librarians, KidLit lovers. You don’t have to be an author or publisher sponsor to join us! Let’s talk about our favorite multicultural and diverse children’s books, authors, and illustrators! You do need to register to win, please do so here. Also in the post you'll be able to see what questions we'll be asking and the incredible book bundles we'll be giving away.
2.) Get inspired with our top book picks
This year we created a resource of book lists from 20 children's book bloggers and 2 children's book authors, and edited by Mia Wenjen, to help parents, caretakers, educators, librarians, KidLit lovers find the exact perfect diversity book they need. We are giving away our eBook FREE January 26-January 31st on Amazon. Though this book is Free for everyone during the days of our celebration, 100% of the money earned from the book will go to fund our teacher classroom book giveaway project.
We have a vast collection of resources on our website. We've culled thousands of books and booklists from bloggers to bring curated resources for parents, teachers, and librarians. This is the List to end all Lists. It is organized by topic and comprises of many cultures, religions, diversity topics, and special needs interests.
3.) Share great book lists with fellow parents, teachers and librarians
According to Scholastic Reading Club editorial directors, the biggest trends for kids' lit in 2017 is that Lessons on Kindness will be key! Based on their findings we've developed a Kindness Kit for teachers to help them incorporate diversity books on kindness and kindness activities. Our kit also has Be a Hero BE Kind poster by Jarrett Krosoczka.
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We have so many reasons to join together and celebrate. We look forward to celebrating diversity in children's books , literacy and the inclusion of all with you. Before I go let me share one more thing with you. Award winning author and artist DEMI created our poster for us this year. Please feel free to download a FREE copy for yourself. Happy Multicultural Children's Book Day!!!
Valarie Budayr is co-founder of Multicultural Children's Book Day, #ReadYourWorld, a celebration of diverse and cultural kid-lit shared with over 98 million people on January 27th. Her foundation puts hundreds of books into the hands of children in rural and intercity areas. Her famous kid lit book blog Jump into a Book inspires children and adults alike to live in their books and bring them alive via extension activities through play, discovery, and adventure. She is also an award winning and best selling author. Her latest release Dragon's are Real is a Kirkus Reviews Best 100 Indie Book of 2016 winner. When not in her world of books, Valarie calls Tennessee home where she lives with her husband, 3 children , 2 adored cats, and a bevy of foxes in the backyard.
**Disclosure: Scholastic is an official sponsor of Multicultural Children's Book Day.**
Courtesy of Jump Into a Book; Multicultural Children's Book Day
