Read Your World Day, formerly known as Multicultural Children’s Book Day, is an annual event that highlights multicultural books and the authors, illustrators, and publishers who create them. It is a unique opportunity to shine the spotlight on diverse/multicultural books, authors, and publishers.
Read Your World Day’s Criteria for “Multicultural” or “Diverse” Children’s Books
- Books that contain characters of color as well as main characters that represent a minority point of view.
- Books that are 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, races, religions, languages, 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.
- Books that show readers what is POSSIBLE–like a book that shows an Asian child as an astronaut, a child from Sudan as an actress, or a biracial child as a world leader.
Multicultural Children's Book Day was founded by co-creators Valarie Budayr and Mia Wenjen. They were frustrated by a lack of diverse and multicultural children’s books available to their own families and decided to take matters into their own hands.
It is much easier to find diverse children's books than it used to be, but that does not mean that we don't make a concerted effort to share diverse books with our children.
I follow several websites to make sure I am up-to-date with what is on offer from publishers for my young students. These provide so much extra information and enable me to feel more confident purchasing a book I haven't seen 'in the flesh' for the school library.
Read Your World has reading lists.
Inclusive Books for Children provides very well annotated booklists.
Social Justice Books reviews books and makes recommendations.
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