Guest Posts Archives - Multicultural Children's Book Day

Should non-Muslim kids celebrate Ramadan & Eid?

May 23, 2019 by Valarie Budayr 1 Comment

{guest post from Ajanta Chakraborty of CultureGroove}

Should non-Muslim kids celebrate Ramadan & Eid?

You probably guessed it; the answer is a resounding yes!

Mom/Dad, what is she wearing?

Kids and their delightful loud questions in public, am I right? If your child hasn’t already asked it, they probably will when they see a little girl in Hijab at a birthday party, at the grocery store, at the park etc. Now is the perfect time to proactively teach our kids so that they learn more about their Muslim friends and get curious to learn even more about their culture.

Fight hate with knowledge

Let me give you another reason with a much bigger impact. In current times, we are all concerned about the environment of fear around us that has its deep roots in ignorance and lack of understanding. It’s really quite simple: we fear what we don’t understand and that fear sometimes manifests in the form of hatred and even violence.

I don’t know much about Islam.

With Ramadan currently in progress, there is no better time than now to introduce the concept to our kids. Are you concerned about talking about another religion without an in-depth understanding of it? Don’t worry, there is indeed a way to introduce the beautiful concepts of Ramadan and Eid without a deep religious study (take a look at our book for more).

So, how do I celebrate it?

The month of Ramadan is not just about fasting and staying hungry. The spirit of Ramadan is to give up something for a month that you covet in order to gain an appreciation for all you have. As a non-Muslim household (and a non-religious household in general), here is how we did it: we asked our son to pick something that he absolutely loves. Like most 5-year-olds, candy and screen time topped the list. He finally decided on candy and committed to giving that up for a few days. On those days, we read our book on Ramadan and Eid and talked about kindness and gratitude. We are also planning to make kindness rocks (see our celebration kit) and distribute them throughout the neighborhood.

Ajanta’s 5-year-old son, Ruhaan, fighting his inner battle to give up on candy for a few days.

It is that simple to dig deeper into the roots of a beautiful celebration and use it as a teaching moment for our kids to help them grow up multicultural!

For a fun children’s book on the topic along with a free celebration kit, visit CultureGroove.com/Eid.

About Ajanta

Ajanta Chakraborty

Ajanta Chakraborty is the author of a bestselling book series with nine titles called Maya & Neel’s India Adventure series.

She is an ex-technologist who is now the CEO of Bollywood Groove and Culture Groove and her team runs a thriving dance & culture program for 250 students in Chicago. Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, Elle magazine, Nielsen, Univision, Fox News, WGN, WCIU and more. Most recently, Ajanta received the Corporate Woman of Achievement award by NAWBO.

When Life Comes Full Circle: How a Mobile Library Expanded My World

May 14, 2019 by Valarie Budayr

Guest post from author Shereen Rahming

I was no more than seven or eight years old growing up in a tiny village in the relatively small country of Belize. Almost everything I loved and knew existed in that single place. The elementary school I attended was right next door in the community center grounds. My classroom was in the main building which had mobile chalkboard walls that could be moved whenever we had our weekly Catholic Church services or any other community gathering. Three different grades shared the modest open room.

My favorite subjects quickly became any subject that taught and shared the stories of other people. I wanted to hear, learn, and read more. The only drawback was that the modesty of our resources meant that we lacked books to have a library. Nowhere in the village or even neighboring town did a proper library exist. My appetite for books that sparked my imagination and taught me about the world outside my little village was satisfied with the occasional delivery of books sent by my mother who was already living in the United States. My whole young life revolved around life in the village, the school next door, and the few books and toys that my mother sent for me.

Then one day, news started circulating. We heard that a mobile library would start coming to the village. Now believe me when I tell you that this was somewhat of a big deal…at least to me, it was. In a village where school resources were scarce, hearing that we would soon have a truck making a stop in the community center grounds once a month to offer books to the children was nothing short of receiving an early birthday or Christmas present, especially to one little girl. Having never been to a library, I had no idea what to expect when my grandmother explained to me what a mobile library was. It sounded great so I waited with anticipation.

The day came when the mobile library finally arrived. I was so excited to get to the little truck that instead of running through the gates of our property, I crawled through an opening in the fence that separated our yard from the community center grounds. I ran to get in line and waited patiently to get my very first library card. When the nice lady handed it to me and I saw my name on it, I flashed a smile and ascended the steps of the truck. I stood there peering inside at all the books that filled the walls. I walked in and perused the books on each shelf. I ended up selecting a book about a bunny who had lots of adventures. I took it home and read it right away. Every book I ever borrowed was my new adventure, lesson, and doorway to a world far bigger than my own.

Fast forward more than thirty years later and that little girl’s love of books had only grown. I am now a mom of two living in the United States and I have published my very own storybook. As an author and publisher, I am blessed enough to encounter some truly amazing people who work in the world of literature. One of those people is a man named, Stan Tucker, who has started his own mobile library in Georgia called the Leap for Literacy Bookmobile.

Stan Tucker and the Leap for Literacy Bookmobile

Photo credit

As I followed Stan’s story, I could not help but beam with delight. How could I not when it evokes my precious childhood memories. I smile every time I see the looks of joy and excitement on the little faces of the children who get to select a book from his library.

Photo credit

Eventually, I contacted Stan to tell him how wonderful I think his work is and to offer my book to him. He accepted and now the little girl whose world opened up thanks to a mobile library, has her very own book in a mobile library where other children can hopefully be inspired in the same way.

I am in no way a great philosopher but I can’t help but look at the pictures that Stan posts including the one of a child holding my own book and I marvel at how life does indeed tend to come full circle.

I am reminded of a quote I once read that said, “Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you.”

The little girl in that village over thirty years ago sent out love for stories, an imagination full of curiosity, and a wavering belief in herself. And in the little faces of those children enjoying her story and other stories, she sees the same love, curiosity, and belief in all things possible. Life has come full circle and it’s a beautiful view from where she now stands.

About Shereen

Shereen Rahming is the author of Ahni & Her Dancing Secret, a graduate of UC Berkeley, a former teacher, and a current contributing writer for the Parent Voice Magazine. She was born in the small Central American country of Belize and immigrated to Los Angeles, California at the age of ten years old. Due to her Black and Latin heritage, she has a great appreciation for diversity and has become a passionate advocate for multicultural and diverse books.

Inspired by the lack of seeing book characters that looked like her as a child, she wrote Ahni & Her Dancing Secret for her daughter so that she would be able to see a character like herself in literature. She is currently working on a second book for her son. Her ultimate goal is to write and promote motivating stories that depict the true diversity of the world we live in and teach readers to appreciate and respect the beauty in themselves and others.

In Ahni & Her Dancing Secret, Ahni dreams of being a prima ballerina so she joins Madam Sabina’s dance school. But her spirit is soon broken when she discovers that the other students are far more advanced than she is and not as friendly as she expected. This charming story depicts the journey of little Ahni from an unsure hopeful to a confident dancer, by discovering the secret to success with the help of wise Madam Sabina. For ages 3-8.

Connect with Shereen via her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Creating an Inclusive Community through Children’s Books

April 16, 2019 by Valarie Budayr

guest post from Erika Probst

Up until several years ago, I lived in an idealistic world that I believed indicated we were in a post-racial society.

We had moved beyond racism, hadn’t we? Sure, occasionally we’d see something about racism in the news, but most of society was not racist, right? Then my idealistic view was shattered by a simple conversation between myself and a Black friend after her son was born. We had worked together for years, we went out together, we were pregnant together, our sons were born months apart. When she told me that she was relieved her son was born with lighter skin, I gave her a look of incredulity and said, “Why would you say that?” She responded, “Let’s talk.” So, we did.

She told me about the racism she and her family had experienced. Daily. The names her brother was called as he walked down the street. The clerks who followed her in the stores to make sure she didn’t steal anything. Wow! I. Had. No. Idea. And that’s a problem. That was the first time I recognized my own White privilege. I vowed to do better.

Creating an Inclusive Community

Fast forward a few years. Though I live in Oregon, a state known for its racist history, the city where I live is the most diverse city between Vancouver, British Columbia and San Francisco. Our area has numerous tech companies with employees from around the world. The short street where I live has families from 13 countries who all speak different languages. Our neighbors are Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim. More importantly, our neighbors enjoy doing things together. Our kids play together. We have summer BBQs, fall s’mores roasts, winter dessert parties.

My family hosts a 4^th of July BBQ and we invite all the neighbors. A few years ago, our newest neighbors, Uche and Uju, who came from Nigeria, attended their first neighborhood BBQ. Uche came up to me and said, “So you just do this? For everyone?” I said, “Yes.” He responded, “This is why I love America and this is the America everyone needs to see!” He encouraged me to share the story of our street. With a lot of coaxing from him, I did. I wrote a children’s book sharing our street’s story. Written from my young son’s innocent perspective, the book introduces readers to our neighbors and how they have taught us about their countries and religions.

My children’s book Friends on my Street: A Celebration of Diversity, is a story, written from my son’s perspective, about the street we live on where we have neighbors from several countries and world religions.

It is important for children to see not only people who look like themselves but people who represent the world around them when they read books. When I give presentations, I talk about the importance of having books about diversity that provide a multicultural view of our world. Books may be the first time children see people of other races, religions, or sexual orientations. By providing these books, parents are sharing that a multicultural world is a beautiful world. I talk about getting to know your neighbors. It starts with saying “hi,” and being inclusive. Inviting neighbors to BBQs, s’mores parties, and dessert parties. Often, it’s our children who bring us together, but our children are watching how the adults interact. When neighbors of diverse backgrounds include each other, our children learn. They see that everyone should be included. This becomes their foundation; this is what they know; this is what they will live; this is what they will pass on.

I will continue to give presentations, sharing the story of my neighborhood. I will educate about privilege and how we need to speak out against isms. I will hope that our children carry this message forward into the next generation.

Erika Bracken Probst was born and raised in rural Alaska where she was instilled with the idea that when communities are close, they grow stronger. After graduating from the University of Portland in 2000 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Erika worked as a nurse at Providence St Vincent Medical Center until 2016. While there, her projects included how to better care for patients of different cultures and educating staff about cultural awareness. Erika now teaches future health care professionals in a high school Health Careers Program. Erika is very involved in her community and especially events supporting inclusion. She lives in Hillsboro, Oregon with her husband and two sons. Her Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/FriendsonmyStreet/ shares daily information about historic and current events related to civil rights, human rights, and cultural/religious events from around the world that occurred on each date.

Writing Revelations | Guest Post from 22X Author, Tim J. Myers

April 9, 2019 by Valarie Budayr

Guest Post by Author, Tim J. Myers

One of the greatest things about being a writer is discovering your own life in your work.

You can’t help writing about what’s important to you, and your experiences often show up in different forms, whether you intended that or not. Art often is, among other things, a window into our deepest human selves. I write for adults and young people, in multiple genres, and in my 22 published books and many individual pieces, I continually find glimpses of my life that worked their way in naturally. I love how art is so inevitably self-revealing, and that’s one of the reasons I love writing.

Writing Revelations

Many of my books, for example, are multicultural in one form or another. My family and I lived in Japan for three years, and, although I didn’t plan it, five of my children’s books are on Japanese themes. One, I’m proud to say, was a New York Times bestseller for children’s books and was read aloud on NPR; Basho and the Fox are also about how important poetry is to me.

As it happens, I’ve recently been thinking about two childhood memories that, I realized, pushed themselves uninvited into my newest book, Yao Bai and the Egg Pirates—memories that reflect something basic about who I am.

I didn’t come from a reading family, and I was, at best, an indifferent student in elementary school. But I can remember like it was yesterday the day the teacher passed out our first “reader”—it must have been in third or fourth grade. For some reason, I went through the book on my own at home, and found in the back of it a palace of treasures. Our teacher never had us read any of those stories, but I read every one more than once–which was not like me. Why such uncharacteristic behavior?

They were fairy tales.

The second memory is of a longer period. I grew up in Colorado Springs, “in the shadow of Pikes Peak” as the phrase goes. I can hardly describe the natural beauty of the Pikes Peak Region. The mountain looms over the entire city, and it was always there in my life, a manifestation of the physical grace and power of the natural world that I imbibed with mother’s milk. The Utes call Pikes Peak “Sun Mountain,” and it’s sacred to them. I think of it as a grandmother, and it’s sacred to me too.

Pikes Peak

So here were two towering impulses in my life: the love of Story and an unwavering sense of wonder, which I first experienced through the wonder of the natural world and fairy tales. I could give many other examples of how those impulses shaped my life and work. Suffice it to say that my new children’s book includes both.

Yao Bai is historical fiction, the story of a Chinese boy during the California Gold Rush. When I first visited China Camp here in the Bay Area, a state park that’s preserved a Chinese shrimp-fishing village from that time, I could almost see a boy running across that beach back in the 1850s.

I recently saw a period photo including a Chinese boy in Monterey and thought, There he is! I knew his life was important, both in itself and to America as a whole—so I knew I had to try to drag that forgotten story out into the light. Chinese Americans have made incredible contributions to American life, and too often that’s forgotten or dismissed.

Chinese in Monterey

But I couldn’t write the story without some wonder in it too. So I’ll leave it at that. I love stories, after all; I’d never give away the ending!

So here’s to reading and writing—may we all keep on discovering ourselves in the magic of the printed word!

Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and university senior lecturer in English. His Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood (Familius) is in both e-book and print form; it was featured on Parents Magazine’s website, Disney’s BabyZone, and won the Ben Franklin Digital Award. His full-length Dear Beast Loveliness: Poems of the Body (BlazeVox) earned an excellent review from poet Grace Cavalieri, and Nectar of Story won praise from Cavalieri, Chase Twichell, Ron Hansen, and Joseph Bruchac.

Tim won the 2012 SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for Fiction and, as a fantasy/science fiction writer, he won a prize in the Writers of the Future Contest, and his work has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Worlds of Fantasy and Horror, Space & Time, Weird Tales, Abyss & Apex, Futures Mysterious, on the Astropoetica website, and elsewhere.

Connect with Tim via his website, Amazon Author Page, and Facebook.

Booklandia: Where the World of Bilingual and Spanish Books is Closer than you Think!

March 14, 2019 by Valarie Budayr

Guest post by Izzie Chea

From humble beginnings in the busy kitchen of an Oakland, CA home in 2016, the idea of bringing children’s Spanish and bilingual books was coming to fruition. Maceo Cabrera-Estévez, Cuban-American mom and book lady for Barefoot Books, noticed the demand for high quality, authentic, and representative Spanish and bilingual children’s literature. There was nowhere to go that would guarantee that bilingual and Spanish books were not just poor translations of English books, and so Booklandia was born.

Booklandia provides Bilingual and Spanish literature to children, ages infant to age 12, through an online store (tienda), a subscription box, or through book sets for teachers, schools, libraries, and organizations like hospitals and community centers. Booklandia also has a donation program giving families and organizations books for every box sold.

Our mission at Booklandia is to assist in creating beautiful, representative, and inclusive home libraries for children. Books from Booklandia are sourced from across Latin America, South America, México, the Caribbean, Spain, and the US and include a diverse representation of characters, stories, themes, and authors.

Part of Booklandia is the commitment to building community, and as a result, Booklandia has a presence at many festivals and events in the SF Bay Area as well as regular free bilingual storytime events in California and Texas. The success of these events is shown in the smiling faces of children when they see books and characters with similar names and features as theirs.

As a current challenge to keep building community, the #LEEMOS3000 Reading Challenge is live throughout the month of March. Readers of all ages and levels are encouraged to log hours all month long and contribute to the collective goal of 3000 hours reading bilingual and Spanish books.

To learn more about Booklandia, please visit www.booklandiabox.com!

To join our #LEEMOS3000 Challenge, please visit https://booklandiabox.com/blogs/news/leemos3000-challenge!

Izzie Chea is Marketing Director at Booklandia. She is a Dominican/Mexican-American writer, storyteller, music teacher, mother, and wife. She resides in ultra-diverse Houston, TX, and enjoys reading with a cafecito, her piano, and the family cat, Simon.