Guest post from the co-founder of Globe Smart Kids, Anne Glick

No better way to start a new year than with Multicultural Children’s Book Day right around the corner! Excited to be a returning author sponsor with 10 diverse friendship stories, all bundled in a virtual library: One Globe Kids

Stories about relatable others lay a foundation for exploration

The idea for One Globe Kids was born one afternoon while I read the children’s book Joyce’s Day to my then 3-year-old son in our apartment in New York City. The book was printed in South Africa in 1974 and given to me as a newborn present by my Aunt Joan in 1975. Its photos and simple text made Joyce’s day in South Africa relatable to me, a young, white girl living in small-town Illinois.

From beginning foreign language study in middle school to studying and working abroad, I strongly feel that my preparation for life in a diverse globalized world can be traced back to the simple curiosity I had for Joyce and her family.

I went looking for more “Joyce-like” books for my son Sebastian and found several beautiful, but basic, mostly illustrated, books about children in other countries. I did not find the personal, intimate, rounded stories that would make these children more familiar than foreign for him. And thus began my journey to make the international story series that I want to share with my kids, Sebastian and his two brothers, Willem and Josef. [Read more…]