Multicultural Children’s Book Day Press Kit #ReadYourWorld
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.
Children’s reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Audrey Press and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom have teamed up to create an ambitious (and much needed) national event. Every year on the last Friday in January, Wenjen and Budayr will be presenting yet another Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD) as a way of celebrating diversity in children’s books.
Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day, Mia and Valarie are on a mission to change all of that. Their mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. Another goal of this exciting event creates a compilation of books and favorite reads that will provide not only a new reading list for the winter, but also a way to expose brilliant books to families, teachers, and libraries.
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.
Together the MCBD team hopes to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions, and religions within the pages of a book. We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers, and librarians to follow along with the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, multicultural children’s book linky, and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.
About Us
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.
Every year, MCBD’s focuses on multicultural/diverse children’s books and how they can work to get these books on shelves and into the hands of deserving families through book donations and fundraising. The MCBD project also offers these FREE services, tools, programs, and initiatives:
Free Resources for Teachers and Parents:
- Diversity Book Lists and Activities
- Diversity Book Award Lists
- Free Book for Teachers
- Free Book for Reviewers
- Free Multicultural Children’s Book Day Poster
- Book Giveaways on Multicultural Children’s Book Day Blog (free updates here)
Using their deep reach and years of expertise, Valarie and Mia are providing an “in” with their readership and will be promoting sponsors via name mention, products, or service in a new and fresh way.
**Every year, the MCBD team encourages book reviewers who do not have a blog to utilize social media channels like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook to share multicultural children’s book reviews. This new initiative will increase MCBD’s reach exponentially.
**Every year, the MCBD team implements advanced tracking and social media analytics for more defined information and feedback for our sponsors.
**Every year, the MCBD team implements new ways to reach out to schools, libraries, and organizations in need to supply them with multicultural books for young readers. (If you know of a school, library or organization that could use MCBD’s help, please email the Project Manager at becky@multiculturalchildrensbookday.com)
**Every year, The MCBD team facilitates a huge Diversity Book Giveaway during #ReadYourWorld Twitter Party from 9-10pm EST. Discussions on the state of diversity books for kids and what’s needed from parents’ perspective are always amazing and educational.
**Every year, during our Official Twitter Party celebration. our #ReadYourWorld hashtag trends.
**Every year, the MCBD team, along with dozens of CoHosts, host a robust and popular book review link-up. Links to hundreds of diverse book reviews and activities are compiled on this link-up to create a vast resource for parents, teachers, and librarians.
**Every year, the MCBD online event attracts over 700 book reviewers.
**Every year, this event achieves nationwide and global attention over many different news venues. Multicultural Children’s Book Day has, and will continue to, encourage a dialogue between publishers, parents, teachers, authors and booksellers on the importance of getting diverse children’s books into the hands of young readers.
What’s FREE from Multicultural Children’s Book Day:
- REVIEWERS (Parenting, Lifestyle, Book Reviewers, Teachers, Librarians): Free diversity book to reviewers who will post a book review on social media in honor of the celebration.
- TEACHERS: Free hardcover diversity book for teachers’ classroom library.
- EVERYONE: Free downloadable Multicultural Children’s Book Day poster that is designed by children’s book industry illustrator.
- EVERYONE: We have hand-selected the best content from educational and children’s book bloggers. This is an extensive list of diversity books and extension activities for kids sorted by country, holiday, ethnicity, genre, and age group here.
- EVERYONE: Packages of diversity books for kids will be given out every 5 minutes during our Twitter Party.
MCBD Fast Facts & Stats:
- To Date (2021) MCBD has donated over 8,500+ FREE diverse picture, chapter, and YA books to deserving classrooms, schools, and organizations.
- More than 5,000 parents and teachers have utilized our resource list of diversity books and extension activities so far.
Collaborations Past and Present
Multicultural Children’s Book Day team is happy to announce their collaboration with The Children’s Book Council. It is our hope that we can come together as a reading community and strive to build bridges of communication between readers of all diverse and cultural backgrounds and the publishing community who produces children’s multi-cultural and diverse titles.
Children’s Book Council (CBC) is the national nonprofit trade association of children’s book publishers, dedicated to supporting and informing the industry and fostering literacy.
Junior Library Guild: In 2016 and 2017 The Junior Library Guild generously donated 200 hardcover diversity books that we were able to give to classrooms for free as part of our Classroom Challenge. More details HERE.
In Conclusion
Our website www.MulticulturalChildrensBookDay.com will continue to be a central location for conversations about multicultural children’s books, author visits, contests, giveaways, and anything that keeps this initiative active all year long. Sponsors will be able to leave their links and sidebar ads in place from the date of purchase until planning for the next month begins (typically September of the coming year) to get maximum exposure and visibility.
As a publisher, author, news service, or P.R. agent, you know how important it is to get books into the hands of families and young readers. We hope you can join us for Multicultural Children’s Book Day and help us in our mission to raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries.
Curious about the difference between #ReadYourWorld –vs-#WeNeedDiverseBooks? Read co-founder Mia’s excellent overview of that very subject.
Press Contact Info:
**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 Kristi at Admin (at) MulticulturalChildrensBookDay (dot) com **
For interviews, quotes, and other inquiries; contact MCBD Project Manager Becky Flansburg at Becky@multiculturalchildrensbookday.com
Multicultural Books for Kids Pinterest Board.
Thank you for expressing interest in Multicultural Children’s Book Day. We are excited about the possibilities that we can create together and the incredible reading moments we can deliver to children.
MCBD Art and Images
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
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