Today I am reviewing the first of two books for Multicultural Children's Book Day (MCCBD). What is Multicultural Children's Book Day? It is a national event which Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom created to celebrate diversity in children's books. 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. This year's MCCBD is January 27th! More about MCCBD and the events this year later in this post. Now onto our book!!
What are your child's dreams? What does he or she dream of doing? We got a glimpse into John D. Olivas childhood dream in Endeavour's Long Journey, written by John D. Olivas and edited by Icy and Michael Smith. As a child John, or Jojo as he is called in the book, visited the Space Center and got to see the Endeavour. During this visit he learns that space shuttles are referred to as a female since they are like mothers to the astronauts who fly in them--taking care of them. Then he dreams the Endeavour begins to talk to him as he looks at it. He floats into space on the Endeavour and learns about her trips into space and what was accomplished on them. The story shares so much information in a wonderful dream like way that it inspires the children to learn even more. With the Endeavour's trips to fix the Hubble telescope and the International Space Station (ISS) there is so much to learn about. At the end of the story Jojo learns that his grandfather helped build the Endeavour.
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| Dr. John D. Olivas By NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
John went on to become an astronaut for NASA. He is retired now and shares his space stories with children in hopes of inspiring them to dream big. At the end of the book is more information about the Endeavour. It has fun facts like the Endeavour is named after a ship led by Captain James Cook of Britian and is the first and only shuttle named by elementary and secondary students in a naming contest. Next there are pages with Endeavour's famous firsts like carrying the first African American female astronaut, Mae Jemison, into space as well as the first Japanese astronaut in the shuttle program, Mamoru Mohri, and the first Native American astronaut to walk in space, John Bennett Herrington. Then it lists some of the other space shuttles famous firsts, has a space quiz and about the Endeavour's final journey to the California Science Center. Then it contains a glossary and a list of on-line resources.
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| The Endeavour at the California Science Center By Elliottwolf (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons |
This book is a wonderful book to introduce the space program and space shuttles. It is also a great book to see how a child's big dreams can come true. To explore the space shuttle a bit more, I printed this downloadable book from NASA. Hazel and I colored it as we read about the space shuttle. I think we made some of the most colorful space shuttles around.
Seeing the rocket boosters and external tank fall away made Hazel question why they fell off. It gave us a chance to talk about the shuttles a bit more and what it takes to get into space. What a wonderful introduction to space travel and a way to see any child can follow his/her dream.
Now for more about Multicultural Children's Book Day! Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day, Mia and Valarie are on a mission to change all of that. Their mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. Another goal of this exciting event is create a compilation of books and favorite reads that will provide not only a new reading list for the winter, but also a way to expose brilliant books to families, teachers, and libraries. This is why I am going to donate this book to our public library. More children will be able to read it and see a young African American boy have a dream that later comes true.
Now an event of this magnitude takes work from many people. The 2015 sponsors for MCCBD are:
Plus there are some fun events going on including giveaways!!
Platinum Sponsor Wisdom Tales Press is hosting a book giveaway on their website that anyone can enter. Winner will receive 6 Wisdom Tales Books of their choice. (For ideas of how wonderful Wisdom Tale Press books are check out my reviews of The Pandas and Their Chopsticks and Other Animal Stories and Everyone Prays.)
Then for those of you on Twitter: Join us for Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party on Jan 27th 9:00pm EST. Use hashtag: #ReadYourWorld to win 10 book packages.
And to keep up-to-date on MCCBD: MCCBD now has it's own Paper.li! A Paper.li is a free online newspaper that aggregates information on the topic of multicultural books for kids from all over the Internet. Please feel free subscribe and stay up-to-date with this topic.
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! To donate or more information click here.
Also check out the MCCBD Pinterest Board to see all the books reviews and visit Jump Into a Book and/or Pragmatic Mom on or after January 27th to see all the reviews in a link party!
Last year we got to review Rainbow Stew for MCCBD. I will be reviewing a second book this year on Friday!
Platinum Sponsors: Wisdom Tales Press, Daybreak Press Global Bookshop,
Gold Sponsors: Satya House, Multicultural Kids.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, Snuggle with Picture Books Publishing, Rainbow Books, Author
Felicia Capers,
Chronicle Books Muslim Writers Publishing , East West Discovery Press.
Plus there are some fun events going on including giveaways!!
Platinum Sponsor Wisdom Tales Press is hosting a book giveaway on their website that anyone can enter. Winner will receive 6 Wisdom Tales Books of their choice. (For ideas of how wonderful Wisdom Tale Press books are check out my reviews of The Pandas and Their Chopsticks and Other Animal Stories and Everyone Prays.)
Then for those of you on Twitter: Join us for Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party on Jan 27th 9:00pm EST. Use hashtag: #ReadYourWorld to win 10 book packages.
And to keep up-to-date on MCCBD: MCCBD now has it's own Paper.li! A Paper.li is a free online newspaper that aggregates information on the topic of multicultural books for kids from all over the Internet. Please feel free subscribe and stay up-to-date with this topic.
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! To donate or more information click here.
Also check out the MCCBD Pinterest Board to see all the books reviews and visit Jump Into a Book and/or Pragmatic Mom on or after January 27th to see all the reviews in a link party!
Last year we got to review Rainbow Stew for MCCBD. I will be reviewing a second book this year on Friday!
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