We did it! Another wildly successful Multicultural Children’s Book Day is complete. Once again, the MCBD team was touched and elevated by the overwhelming support and enthusiasm surrounding our diverse children’s literature online celebration. In the days following the crescendo of the event, and our crazy-fun annual Twitter Party, we all have spent hours sifting through the amazing camaraderie, comments, reviews, classroom celebrations, and touching kudos that were offered up during our on and offline global event. [Read more…]
2021 Twitter Party Questions and PRIZES!
Twitter Party!!!!!!
Posted by Multicultural Children’s Book Day on Thursday, January 28, 2021
Join us on Friday, Jan 29, 2021, at 9 pm EST for the 8th annual Multicultural Children’s Book Day Twitter Party! REGISTER HERE.
This hour includes multicultural book discussions, addressing timely issues, diverse book recommendations, & reading ideas.
*** US and Global participants welcome. **
The Multicultural Children’s Book Day Twitter Party 2021 will be giving away a 5-8 diverse book bundle every five minutes! We also have some bonus prizes and prizes specifically for our non-USA participants. Scroll down to see all of the amazing book bundles and prizes.
Hashtag: Don’t forget to connect with us on social media and be sure and look for/use our official hashtag #ReadYourWorld.
This year, our 1/29/21 Party will occur at 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET and we promise it will be INSANELY fun and fast-paced! Be sure and follow Multicultural Children’s Book Day on Twitter so you can join the party. Follow the hashtag #ReadYourWorld to join the conversation, connect with like-minded parts, authors, publishers, educators, organizations, and librarians.
2021 MCBD TWITTER PARTY Questions:
Question 1 (9:00 pm): Are you having uncomfortable conversations about racism and white privilege with your kids or other people?
Question 2 (9:05 pm): What resources on racism and white privilege do you recommend or seek?
Question 3 (9:10 pm): Has the pandemic made your children feel anxious, isolated, or depressed? Can you recommend books that have helped?
Question 4 (9:15 pm): How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your and/or your kids’ reading life?
Question 5 (9:20 pm): What diversity topics in children’s books do you wish there were more books on?
Question 6 (9:25 pm): Our Classroom Kit this year is about activism and activists. What are your favorite books on these topics?
Question 7 (9:30 pm): What do you hope diversity and multicultural books will teach your children?
Question 8 (9:35 pm): What are your favorite diverse children’s and YA books this past year? Let’s give them a shout out!
Question 9 (9:40 pm): What genre of children’s books do you think lacks the most diversity? (board books, picture books, easy readers, early chapter books, graphic novels)
Question 10 (9:45 pm): Publishers like language Lizard, Hoopoe Books, and TimTimTom books all offer books in as many as 50 languages. What languages do you feel still are not represented well in children’s literature?
Question 11 (9:50 pm): What other ways could Multicultural Children’s Book Day support readers, parents, and educators in our quest to raise awareness for the importance of diversity and children’s literature?
Question 12 (9:55 pm): What topic do you think we should do for our next Classroom Kit?
PRIZES
BONUS PRIZE: Courtesy of Hoopoe Books–ONE lucky Winner will get a 6-Book Bundle!
BONUS PRIZES! Courtesy of The Pack-n-Go Girls, THREE lucky winners will receive a 2-3 book set of Pack-n-Go Girls books!
BONUS PRIZE! Courtesy of Lois and The Five Enchanted Mermaids! ONE winner (USA-only) will win this bundle that has a Zari doll and Zari hardcover book in it. (Zari is the African-American mermaid in the Five Enchanted Mermaids group.)
BONUS PRIZE! Courtesy of Capstone FIVE WINNERS will win a #ReadingIsForEveryone notebook journal and an oversized book bag featuring some favorite Capstone characters and illustrated by award-winning artist Hatem Aly. Capstone is passionate about inclusivity, equity, and accessibility for the benefit of all kids. They are passionate about inclusivity, equity, and accessibility for the benefit of all kids because we believe #ReadingIsForEveryone! Help us celebrate and advocate for the importance of reading and representation.
BOOK BUNDLES
BOOK BUNDLE #1: Language Lizard-Building Bridges book and a set of their Idiom Books
BOOK BUNDLE #2: PDF-only BOOK BUNDLE Courtesy of Capstone!! ONE WINNER will win a PDF-only bundle of these books:
1. Hello, Mandarin Duck! by Bao Phi
2. Camila the Star series by Alicia Salazar: (2 of 4 titles)
- a. Camila the Baking Star
- b. Camila the Record-Breaking Star
3. Astrid and Apollo series by V.T. Bidania: (2 of 4 titles)
- a. Astrid and Apollo and the Happy New Year
- b. Astrid and Apollo and the Starry Campout
4. Yasmin series by Saadia Faruqi: (2 of 4 titles)
- a. Yasmin the Librarian
- b. Yasmin the Scientist
5. The Greatest Superpower by Alex Sanchez
6. Farah Rocks New Beginnings by Susan Muaddi Darraj
BOOK BUNDLE #3
- When God Made the World by Matthew Paul Turner
- Quigley the Quiet Hedgehog by Claudine Norden
- Meet Monique by Denise Lawson
- Sumo Joe by Mia Wenjen
- Mommy, I Need my Wheels by Jeanne Fortune
- Bindiya in India by Monique Kamaria Chheda
- Mei Ling in China City by Icy Smith
BOOK BUNDLE #4
- Greenhorn by Anna Olswanger
- Oh Brother, Little Brother by Candid Brandon
- Dorje the Yak by Caryn Hartman
- Accordionly by Michael Genhart
- Carols & carmen Campout by Kristin McDonald
- This is the Earth by Deedee Cummings
- Opening the Road by Keila Dawson
- Shlemiel Crooks by Anna Olswanger
BOOK BUNDLE #5 (Bilingual Books from Language Lizard)
- Blesk bac Juchi/Flash Bang Wheee! (Czech and English)
- Moja biografija/My Life Story by Ulfet Mahmount & Alan Thompson
- Awon Ore e Floppy/Floppy’s Friends by Guido Van Genechten
- My Daddy is a Giant (in Turkish and English) by Carl Norac
- Jill and the Beanstalk by Manju Gregory (Albanian and English)
- Rama and the Demon King by Jessica Souhami (Chinese/English)
- What Shall We Do with the Boo Hoo Baby? by Cressida Cowell (Panjabi/English)
- Cary a kruhy/Line and Circle (Czech/English)
BOOK BUNDLE #6: PDF-only BOOK BUNDLE Courtesy of Make A Way Media/Author Deedee Cummings!! ONE WINNER will win a NINE-BOOK PDF-only bundle:
BOOK BUNDLE #7 “I Am America” Chapter Books from Jolly Fish Press
- Journey to a Promised Lande: A Story of the Exodusters
- If The Fire Comes: A Story of Segregation during the Great Depression
- When The Earth Dragon Trembled: A Story of Chinatown During the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
- Line We Draw: A Story of Imprisoned Japanese Americans
- United to Strike: A Story of the Delano Grape Workers
- Stranger on the Home Front: A Story of Indian Immigrants and World War I
BOOK BUNDLE #8 Chapter and YA Books
- The Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw
- Red Dove Kisten to the Wind by Sonia Antaki
- Sophie Washington: The Snitch by Tonya Duncan Ellis
- Sophie Washington: My BFF by Tonya Duncan Ellis
- She Flew by Catherine Bodega
- Girls on the Line by Jennie Liu
- The Freedom Stone by Judi Howe
- Mermaid tales by Debbie Dadey
BOOK BUNDLE #9
- Sounds all Around the World: Dr. James Chapman
- Daddy and Me by T.L. Wynne
- Do Not Bring Your Dragon to the Last Day of School by Julie Gassman
- Sissy Goes Tiny by Rebecca Flansburg and BA Norrgard
- Sanda: the Girl with the Magical Smile by Sabina Mugassa Bingman
- Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey
- My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden’s Childhood Journey by Jeanne Walker Harvey
BOOK BUNDLE #10
- Las Desventuras de Tarah y Darah by Dyesha and Triesha McCants
- The Switch: The Misadventures of Tarah and Darah by Dyesha and Triesha McCants
- Great Cape-o Colors by Karl Beckstrand
- De La Silla De Ivan Salio by Karl Beckstrand
- Brandon and his Mask by Katherine Smith
- Bella’s Surprise Boat by Christianne C Jones
- When God Made the World by Matthew Paul Turner
BOOK BUNDLE #11 Board Books and Picture Books
- Future Astronaut by Lori Alexander
- Future Doctor by Lori Alexander
- Future Engineer by Lori Alexander
- The Saint Nicholas Snow Day by Charlotte Riggle
- Alabama Oh and the New Boy by Andi Cann
- LaDonna’s Easter in Paris by Kimberly Gorden Biddle
- Women Who March by Adena Raub Dershowitz
- Molelo the Fire Elephant by Morgan Spicer
BOOK BUNDLE #12
- That Can Be Arranged: A Muslim Love Story by Huda Fahmy
- Future President (Board Book) by Lori Alexander
- GROW! How We Get Food from our Garden by Karl Beckstrand
- 5 Worlds: The Cobalt Prince by Mark and Alexis Seigel
- The Noisy Classroom by Angela Shante
- Lost by Christine Reynebeau
- Scribbles by Theresa Mackiewicz
- Who’s Jerry By T.M.Jackson
GRAND PRIZE!! 12 Diverse Books!
- Mr. Inker Finds a Home by Christina Francine
- Navid Sin Chimenea by Karina Elze
- A Sporting Chance: How Ludwig Guttman Created the Paralympic Games by Lori Alexander
- It’s Not Little Red Riding Hood by Josh Funk
- HOLA! Let’s Learn Spanish by Judy Martialay
- O is for Oshun by Kya Johnson
- Scribbles by Theresa Mackiewicz
- Mighty May Won’t Cry Today by Kendra & Claire-Voe Ocampo
- What if we Were All the Same! by CM Harris
- RAINBOW: A First Book of Pride by Michael Genhart
- Sumo Joe by Mia Wenjen
- Isn’t It Scary? by Vernon Hamilton
REGISTER FOR THE TWITTER PARTY BELOW!
January and Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2021
Planning and implementation for Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2021 is zooooommming right along!
Can you believe that MCBD2021 is less than 30 days away? As my grandpa used to say, “We’re on the downhill slide to the finish line!”
Here’s what’s new and interesting
- Book Matching Has Wrapped: From mid-November to the end of December, the MCBD Team worked hard to match reviewers with authors or publishers and it was no small task. As much as we want to keep going and keep assigning authors to reviewers, we know from past experience that it gets stressful and frustrating for all parties involved when review books don’t arrive on time. We do, however, have wonderful PDFs of diverse books to share and review so contact Admin (at)
- Our Project Manager did an excellent Facebook Live Friday Chat on 1/8 about the basic format of book reviews for MCBD and how to also “Next Level” your reviews to set yourself apart from the crowd. Watch this Chat on replay HERE.
- Sponsorships Are Closed and WOW, do are we impressed with our Medallion Level and Author Level 2021 Sponsors!
- TWITTER PARTY! Yes, it’s true–we can hardly contain our excitement. Our annual MCBD Twitter Party is not only crazy-fun, it’s a chance for educators, parents, readers, reviewers, authors, publishers, and literacy organizations to come together for an hour of intense discussion on relevant topics on the diverse literacy for kids world.
A Meaningful Group Chat
If you haven’t joined our private MCBD Facebook Group, please do! The group is growing like crazy and we have a nice mix of educators, parents, book reviewers, influencers, authors, and publishers.
Why “Meaningful Groups?”
Then our Hostess with the Mostess, Project Manager Becky Flansburg, will talk about a topic that would appeal to the wide range of group members that we have. Weekly could include topics like blogging, social media, publishing, promotion, and marketing, or even topics from a parent’s perspective work/life balance, time management, anxious kids, etc.
We have an amazing pool of Smart People in this group, and on the MCBD Team, so we want to use our knowledge bank to make our private Facebook Group a Meaningful one.
P.S. These Lives will be archived so they can be watched at a later date too 🙂
**If you have questions about Multicultural Children’s Book Day, how to get involved, or how to get free books for your school or classroom, email Admin (at) MulticulturalChildrensBookDay (dot) com **
SUMMARY OF THE Multicultural Children’s Book Day EVENT
FIRST, a giant blog tour —
Readers, parents, teachers, librarians, and caregivers are coming together to explore lots of books with diverse content and sharing their thoughts and feedback via book reviews, book lists, and links.
SECOND, a giant networking event —
This global event connects readers, caregivers, educators, librarians, non-profits, organizations, sponsors, co-hosts, bloggers, and thought leaders so we can all achieve a common goal of raising awareness on the importance of diversity in children’s and YA literature.
THIRD, a virtual book drive —
Through MCBD initiatives like the FREE Diverse Books for Classrooms Project, The Offline Classroom Swag Pack, and continued outreach to underserved readers, proceeds raised during the course of this online event (and all year-long) go towards getting free multicultural books in locations where they are needed and into the hands of young readers.
4 Ways to Create Unique Diverse Book Review
{Special Message from Project Manager, Becky Flansburg}
We are so excited that things are rolling along beautifully for our Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2021 event! Currently, we are working on wrapping up book matching for the year and are busy planning to make our annual Twitter Party even more epic than it has been in the past.
So today, I want to talk a little bit about the process of book reviewing for this event. Basically, when we asked our reviewers to review a book for our online (and offline) celebration, we would like them to do a handful of things.
The Basic Book Review for MCBD2021
The main thing is to share the title of the book the authors name the illustrator if possible and also who gave them the book whether it’s the publisher’s name like capstone or hoopoe etc. then include a brief summary of the book itself with the book is about, your thoughts on the book what you liked or didn’t like about the book and then the mandatory information that MCBD will be supplying you around the 14th of this month. AND DON’T FORGET–#ReadYourWorld
We also encourage (in the vein of disclosure) that reviewers mention that they were gifted the book they are reviewing.
The Basic Element for a Book Review is:
- Share the title of the book, the author, and the illustrator. Phrase it like “I was gifted a copy of_____”
- If applicable, mention the publisher (Capstone, Candlewick, Star Bright, Pack-N-Go Girls, etc)
- It’s important that you mention the word gifted.
- Then, share a brief summary of the book, your thoughts/likes about the book, and then (whenever possible) as much of the mandatory info we will send around the 14th as possible.
- And don’t forget the #ReadYourWorld Hashtag!
On the flipside, if you are leaving a review on Amazon, just leave a review as you normally would. You don’t need to mention you were gifted the book and you don’t need to include any of the mandatory MCBD information. Just leave a review like any normal person would do if they bought a book and wanted to review leave a review for the author.
Here’s an example of reviews from 2020.
NOTE: We are a little behind on getting this mandatory information out because we still have sponsors trickling in which is unusual but 2020 was just an unusual year so we’re not surprised. So bear with us a little longer on that! We’d like our reviewers to begin posting their reviews as close to the celebration date (1/29/21) as possible because it’s great for building buzz.
Next Leveling Your Book Reviews
Now let’s talk about how to make your book review unique. We have many reviewers, almost 700 from all over the globe, reviewing books. And many will be reviewing more than one book! We roughly figure that during this event there will be 1200 to 1400+ books being reviewed on social media. Impressive, right?
That being said, the question has come up about the uniqueness of reviews during this online celebration.
The question was posed that if five people are reviewing the same book, wouldn’t the reviews (plus the mandatory copy-n-paste info) make them all look the same? Actually NO, and that is why we want to encourage our reviewers to think outside the box a little when writing their review for MCBD.
And It’s actually easier than You think.
Now we completely understand that if you are writing a review on a blog you obviously have more space and word count when sharing reviews and it’s a little harder on social media especially Twitter.
If you are reviewing on Twitter, I would definitely stick just to the formula of the title of the book the author in the illustrator –tag them when you can and don’t forget to include #ReadYourWorld
If you are sharing your review on a blog, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube, you have more wiggle room on how wordy you can be.
You will also have more word count to be able to include as much of our mandatory information as possible. The most important piece of the Mandatory Book Review info we will send to you all around the 14th is the list of our Medallion Sponsors and our Author Sponsor because they appreciate the name mention on social media.
In that case, here are a few ideas on how to make your review unique.
Ways to Next Level Your Reviews
- Ways to make your review different from anyone else is to just be YOU. You are uniquely YOU so your thoughts and feedback are already going to be different.
- You can share discussion questions activity ideas, links to downloads from the publisher that are related to the book, or things about the book that resonated with your life story.
- Many of the authors and publishers will have ready to go activities downloadable coloring pages and discussion questions on their websites. Use those activities, downloads, or discussion questions to engage with your own family and share the results as part of your review.
- TALK TO YOUR AUTHOR: Learn more about the author and the illustrator because we promise they are interesting people! Ask them questions about their author/illustrator journey or ask the Author what inspired them to write the book.
I have a lot of experience in interviewing people for national magazines so I have created templated questions that seem to be good conversation starters and a great way to get to know someone better.
These questions are great to ask just to find out a little more about the person behind the book.
You don’t have to ask all five questions, and you don’t have to call them on the phone (unless you want to). You can choose one question email them and share their answer and then bingo you have a unique element to your book review.
We appreciate all of the reviews that people are producing for this wonderful event! We are very proud and grateful to all of those folks who are helping this children’s literacy celebration grow and evolve year after year.
(Grand)parenting at a distance
{Guest Post by Pack-n-Go Girls}
Oh, so many challenges this year. And so many moments where we feel like we’ve lost time we’ll never get back. If you’re like I am, you’ve missed in-person time with your grandkids, nieces and nephews, or maybe even your own child. Zoom has saved us from being totally unknown to each other, but we all still miss giving a real hug and holding hands as we head to the park.
Here’s some good news in the middle of all this: those virtual calls may actually be closer to the real thing than it seems. In a recent New York Times’ article, contributing opinion writer Dr. Richard Friedman shares an interesting study: Young children “were put in a mildly stressful situation — asked to perform math and verbal tasks in front of an audience — and then given a randomly assigned form of parental contact: in-person; by text, by telephone and no contact at all.
“Researchers asked the children afterward how they felt, and then measured their levels of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the level of the prosocial hormone oxytocin. Strikingly, texting with a parent provided no more comfort than having no contact at all. But telephone communication was just as effective as being able to touch and see a parent.”
While in-person time can never be replaced, here’s a cool idea for interacting virtually: spend time reading together. Even better? Choose books from MCBD’s own multicultural book lists or Pack-n-Go Girls list. Most if not all are on Amazon or can be ordered through your local bookstore. Many are at your local library.
For younger kids, picture books just get better and better. For older kids, look for chapter books (of course, the Pack-n-Go Girls Adventure books are a great place to start!). Take turns reading pages or chapters together. If you’re on a budget (and aren’t we all?), arrange for both you and the kids you love to get the library books through everyone’s own library system.
Yes, it would definitely be better to be together, tucked under a toasty throw in front of the fireplace as you discover a new book. But it’s nice to know you don’t have to give up this favorite thing together just because you’re at a distance.
For more virtual connecting ideas, check out this Pack-n-Go Girls blog.
About Pack-N-Go Girls
Dreaming of true-blue friends, mysterious adventures, and faraway places? Pack-n-Go Girls take you there!
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