Welcome to the Multicultural Children’s Book Day!
We are so glad you are here.
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.
How Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD) Came to Be
After being frustrated by a lack of diverse and multicultural children’s books available to their own families, reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Audrey Press Books and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom decided to take matters into their own hands. The book-loving moms then teamed up to create a much-needed national event and on January 27th, 2012 the first-ever Multicultural Children’s Book Day was celebrated.
Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day platform, the mission from Day One has been to not only raise awareness around kid’s books that celebrate diversity but to also get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries.
“Kids need to ‘see themselves’ in the pages of the books they read,” noted Budayr. “We are determined to not only shine the spotlight on all of the multicultural books available but also offer visibility for the amazing authors and publishers who create them.”
The MCBD online celebration attracts thousands of supporters, over 800 book reviewers, and dozens of quality authors and publishers. The non-profit has also shifted from an “every January 27th” model to “the last Friday in January” to avoid conflicting with International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The upcoming next MCBD celebration will occur on and offline on January 29, 2021.
The results and support overwhelming as authors, publishers, parents, teachers, bloggers, and librarians joined forces to offer up an online event designed to shine the spotlight on diversity in children’s literature.
As we enter our 8th year, we feel that Multicultural Children’s Book Day has achieved their goal of shining the spotlight on all of the amazing multicultural children’s books available to our young readers, teachers, librarians, and parents worldwide.
With each passing year, not only has the event itself grown exponentially, this non-profit initiative has expanded to offline classroom programs, celebrations, and we now have a global reach.
To date, this non-profit has donated over 8,000 books to kids and that number continues to climb.
Meet the co-founders of Multicultural Children’s Book Day:
Valarie Budayr is the CEO of Audrey Press and is an award-winning children’s author of The Fox Diaries: The Year the Foxes Came to our Garden, A Year in The Secret Garden, The Ultimate Guide To Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, and Dragons Are Real. She is passionate about making kids’ 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 our world together while having fun.
Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom is a Harvard grad with a love of children’s books, 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.
**Multicultural Children’s Book Day is proud to announce that it is a 5013C non-profit!
The next MCBD celebration is Thursday, January 26, 2023!
(Friday, January 27, 2023, is Holocaust Remembrance Day so we switch to Thursday on those years.)
Learn more about the Multicultural Children’s Book Day initiative HERE
Learn how we classified what is a “diverse book” HERE.
