Please welcome Nestlé Smarties Prize for Children’s Literature and Nestlé Smarties Prize for Children’s Literature winner SF Said. His book, Phoenix, which won an IBBY International Honour List for writing can be described as the Brit version of Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming. Today, he shares his favorite diverse YA and chapter books. We are also giving away a copy of Phoenix. Please see bottom of the post to enter the Rafflecopter to win.
Favorite Multicultural Chapter & YA Books
A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
I learned from Le Guin that children’s literature could be great literature, and that it could tell stories about people of colour – for Earthsea’s wizards were all brown, copper-red, or black. This was something I’d never seen before, and as someone from a Middle Eastern Muslim background, it came as a revelation after which anything seemed possible. [chapter book, ages 9 and up]