Multicultural and International Books

These books are essential. My classroom is multicultural. We need to accept each other and look past individual differences to learn to work together. We work at that. There is a big difference between generalizing and stereotyping and yet they both fall into disrepute when used inaccurately. Multicultural books need to be put into history so that children can see that people did act and feel in ways in the past that brought about pain and disrespect...that it doesn't need to be that way, that we, ourselves, in our circle, can make a difference. It doesn't hurt for a book to say something wrong and us have a reason to talk about whether that makes sense or not. We were comparing our corner of the world with Asia. So, the children read their own books about that area, and we read together Sadako. My children felt the pain of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes this year because we have families that are in Iraq ourselves. We talked about the history of it and also about the consequences of it. We try to compare our corner with corners all over the world. I find as many books as I can. I liked the quote on page 190 "'Cultural authenticity', means that those from within a culture feel that a book has accurately and honestly reflected their experiences and viewpoints." For us, the study of the Athapascans in our area demands cultural authenticity. WE are here.