Now in its sixth year and held on the last Friday in January, Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD) celebrates books that celebrate diversity. As classrooms are increasingly filled with children from a diversity of backgrounds, it is important to provide them with books that reflect their lives, books in which they can find themselves.
The purpose of Multicultural Children’s Book Day is to create awareness of books that celebrate diversity and to get more of them into classrooms and libraries.
Valarie Budayr and Mia Wenjen, co-founders of MCBD, define multicultural books as:
- Books that contain characters of color as well as main characters that represent a minority point of view.
- Books written by an author of diversity or color from their perspective. Search #ownvoices to discover diverse books written by diverse authors.
- Books that share ideas, stories, and information about cultures, race, religion, language, and traditions. These books can be non-fiction, but still written in a way that kids will find entertaining and informative.
- Books that embrace special needs or even “hidden disabilities” like ADHD, ADD, and anxiety.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day provides us with an opportunity to examine the collections of books in our classrooms and libraries to determine if they reflect the lives our children.
This year, for the first time, I am participating in the MCBD celebrations with a review of I am Farmer, a picture book written by Miranda and Baptiste Paul and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. I am grateful to Miranda and Paul and publisher Millbrook Press for providing me with a link to access the book on NetGallery prior to its publication in early February.
Continue reading: Multicultural Children’s Book Day: Book Review – Readilearn
Norah Colvin 
I am so glad you are participating Norah. I love your post and the book you shared.
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Thank you, Patricia. I think my joining in may have been prompted by you. 🙂
The book is lovely. I really enjoyed it. I was worried I may have been allocated one that I didn’t like, but I needn’t have. This story of Tantoh Nforba is rich on many levels.
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Wonderful find, Norah.
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Thanks so much, Jacqui. It is a lovely book, but I can’t take the credit for finding it. It was allocated to me by the organisers of MCBD. The more I thought about Tantoh’s story, the more value I could see in sharing it.
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A great occasion to celebrate, and good to see you taking your rightful place among reviewers. I enjoyed reading about Tantoh.
I know next to nothing about Cameroon but was surprised and saddened that he was teased for his interest in farming. When I visited Zimbabwe thirty years ago – and I recognise there’s no reason to expect these two African countries should have anything in common – I was impressed that children were taught agriculture in school, something I don’t believe it was happening in the UK at the time. We can learn so much from other cultures.
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Thank you, Anne. I am not experienced as a reviewer and wasn’t sure how to go about it so I’m pleased it read all right. Coming from an expert reviewer, your comment is appreciated.
It’s good that agriculture was being taught in Zimbabwe. I think it was an option here is some (few) high schools, but was more a study for college years.
Nowadays, many schools are starting up vegetable gardens and either cooking or selling the produce. Some schools use the produce in their tuckshops, which I think is wonderful.
We can learn so much from other cultures. The world and its people are fascinating.
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Great book, Norah…and wonderful post!
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Thank you, Vivian. It is a great book!
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