Multicultural Children’s Book Day: Who We Are
Multicultural Children’s Book Day is a non-profit whose mission is to raise awareness about children’s books that celebrate diversity and to get more of these books into classrooms and libraries. To date, Multicultural Children’s Book Day, along with literacy partners, authors, and publishers, has donated over 10,800 books to parents, teachers, and librarians. Multicultural Children’s Book Day strives to shine the spotlight on the diverse books and authors that often get overlooked by mainstream publishing and media.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day Initiative SUMMARY**
“Mia and Val–You both started a movement that will outlive you. Hopefully, one day will come when this celebration isn’t needed because it will have fully succeeded in its mission to bring diverse window/mirror books.” ~Annie Lynn Music
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 and YA literature.
Celebrated annually on the last Thursday in January, this global non-profit offers a plethora of free resources, teaching tools, booklists, downloads, and a year-round initiative to get multicultural and diverse books into the hands of young readers.
To date, we have donated over 10,800+ books to underserved kids, classrooms, and organizations, and that number continues to climb.
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 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 celebration is the last Thursday in January, unless it conflicts with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which case it will move to the last Wednesday. The upcoming next MCBD celebration will occur on and offline on January 25, 2024.
The results and support were 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 10th year, we feel that Multicultural Children’s Book Day has achieved its 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, and celebrations, and we now have a global reach.
To date, this non-profit has donated over 10,000+ books to kids, and that number continues to climb.
SUMMARY OF MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN’S BOOK DAY EVENT
FIRST, a unique opportunity to shine the spotlight on diverse/multicultural books, authors, and publishers.
SECOND, a giant online book reviewing event —
Book appreciators, readers, parents, teachers, librarians, and caregivers have the opportunity to explore lots of children’s and YA books with diverse content via online marketing that provides robust visibility for authors and publishers, book reviews, classroom kits, classroom book bundles, contests, giveaways, book lists, activity suggestions, and links.
THIRD, a giant networking event —
An ongoing mission to connect organizers, sponsors, co-hosts, bloggers, and others interested in expanding awareness of, and promotion of multicultural children’s books via our Twitter Party and very active MCBD Facebook Group.
FOURTH, an offline classroom, library, or gathering place celebration —
A chance for students, educators, and parents to celebrate diversity and multicultural books in the months leading up to, and during, the Multicultural Children’s Book Day celebration that is held on the last Friday in January.
FIFTH, a year-long literacy-based initiative-
That works tirelessly to provide books to classrooms, organizations, and under-served kids all year long via book donations.
Use hashtag # ReadYourWorld for social media.
FREE RESOURCES
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: Everyone Is Welcome Here Empathy Kit:
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: Classroom Activism and Activists: We Can All Be Champions of Change
2021 Homeschooling Families Kit: World Travel from your Homeschool Table
2022 Raising Awareness on Systemic Racism in America Classroom Kit
2023 Mental Health Support for Stressful Times
Access all of our downloadable Classroom Kits.
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.
How to get involved?
SPONSORSHIP LEVELS
GO HERE to view current Sponsorship Levels and rates
Multicultural Children’s Book Day will include book reviews from noted bloggers all over the world, giveaways, and book-related activities for young readers of all ages.
Go HERE to be a book reviewer.
Go HERE to get a free book for your classroom.
Go HERE to donate and help us get books into the hands of under-served kids.
Go HERE to view our current Medallion Level Sponsors
Go HERE to see our current Author Sponsors.
Go HERE to see the latest on the MCCBD blog.
Go HERE to get to know our valued CoHosts.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day: Social Media Numbers
Pinterest: 150K followers
Twitter: 15.9K followers
Instagram: 19.9K followers
Facebook: 5,900 followers
Facebook Group: 2,300 Members
YouTube: 8 subscribers
TikTok: 49 followers
***Support the diverse children’s literacy initiative Multicultural Children’s Book Day! Creators can donate books that will be reviewed and shared on social media. We also have sponsorships at a variety of price points.***
For more information about Multicultural Children’s Book Day, please contact Admin@
**If you are planning something special for your home, classroom, library, or organization, here are some Talking Points and Facts about Multicultural Children’s Book Day.
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