Multicultural Children's Book Day

I’ve been looking forward to 2nd Annual Multicultural Children’s Book Day for months! Today is the day to find loads and loads of great multicultural books for kids to fill your shelves.

This year I’m pleased to be a co-host of the event along with some other great bloggers. The co-creators of this unique event are Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press.

Full Dislosure: I received a set of I See the Sun books from the publisher to review. All opinions expressed are my own. This post also contains affiliate links.

“MCCBD 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 the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.”

I had the pleasure of reviewing the I See The Sun series of books from Satya House Publications. The set of books walks children through a day in the life of a child in a different country beginning at daybreak and ending at sunset.

One of the neat things about this series is that it is written in English and the native language of the country.

I See the Sun in Nepal is perfect for young readers because there are only a few sentences on each page. I See the Sun in Mexico is the longest book in the series and would be appropriate for slightly older children. The other books (I See the Sun in China, I See the Sun in Russia, I See the Sun in Afghanistan, and I See the Sun in Myanmar) in the series were a happy medium between the two lengths.

We decided to highlight I See the Sun in China for this post and share a few activities that would be fun to compliment the book.

In I See the Sun in China, we follow a child who lives in a small town and travels to Shanghai. She starts her day with congee and heads to the ferry. Throughout the day she visits family, watches men play mah jong, and takes in all the sights and sounds of the city.

After reading I See the Sun in China, try some of these activities to learn more about the Chinese culture.

Make a Chinese paper lantern from Sophie’s World.
Design your own Chinese chomp from My Little Bookcase.
Hand out Chinese Lai-See envelopes from Evermine Blog for the Chinese New Year.
Read books about the Chinese New Year.

Check out more wonderful reviews of Multicultural Children’s Books below. And, if you have a post to link, please do so!

We’re also partnering with First Book to offer a Virtual Book Drive that will help donate multicultural children’s books through their channels during the week of the event. We want to help get diversity books into the hands of kids who most need it and now we have a way to do it! The Virtual Book Drive is LIVE and can be found HERE.

MCCBD is also collaborating with Children’s Book Council to highlight wonderful diversity books and authors on an ongoing basis all year.

MCCBD’s 2015 Sponsors include Platinum Sponsors: Wisdom Tales Press, Daybreak Press Global Bookshop, Gold Sponsors: Satya House, MulticulturalKids.com, Author Stephen Hodges and the Magic Poof, Silver Sponsors: Junior Library Guild, Capstone Publishing, Lee and Low Books, The Omnibus Publishing. Bronze Sponsors:Double Dutch Dolls, Bliss Group Books, Author Richa Jha, Rainbow Books, Author FeliciaCapers, Chronicle Books Muslim Writers Publishing ,East West Discovery Press.