Friday, August 29, 2014

Around the World in a Single Book - part 1: children

Our Social Studies curriculum for third grade centers around world geography and world cultures, so I am always on the lookout for authentic books about children around the world. This post features some of my favorite books that teach kids about other children and cultures around the world. (Follow up posts will cover books that teach about cultures in general and books about specific aspects of cultures around the world.)

Books about Children around the World


Children Just Like Me series (1995) by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley. Children Just Like Me is the first book in a growing series of books by husband-and-wife photographers-and-writers Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley. In cooperation with UNICEF, they have traveled around the world interviewing and photographing children and their families. This book features one or two page spreads about individual children from different countries, including information about their hobbies, families, favorite foods, schools, hopes for the future, and much more. My students love learning about the kids and seeing a glimpse of their lives.

 

The Kindersleys have since branched out and created a whole series of books. Children Just Like Me: Celebrations! (1997) features holidays and celebrations around the world, organized seasonally. Again, information about each holiday is shared through the eyes of an individual child. Children Just Like Me: Our Favorite Stories is a collection of folktales from around the world. There are also continent specific versions of the books available, including Children of Europe, Children of Africa and Neighboring Countries, and Children of the Americas.

These books make great jumping off points for learning about a specific country or culture but also for discussing point of view and perspective. We often look at the children from the US (New York, Illinois, New Mexico, California, and Alaska) to talk about how their perspectives on the US are the same or different from our own. This helps students to see how it is just as impossible for one child to represent the whole of the US as it is for one child to represent the whole of Botswana or the whole of Africa. This is also a great beginning of the year book to share and then have students make their own "Children Just Like Me" pages as a way to build classroom community.

 

Another great UNICEF book series is the "A __ Like Mine" series. These books shift the focus from individual children and are instead organized more by topic (but each topic often features specific children). This series covers heavier topics and may be more suitable for middle-to-late elementary students. A Life Like Mine: how children live around the world (2002) is organized around four major topics: survival, development, protection, and participation. The book shares a lot of facts, both positive and negative, about children and children's issues in the world today. A School Like Mine: a unique celebration of schools around the world (2007) introduces readers to different schools around the world, organized by continent, and opens with a brief discussion of UNICEF's work to promote schools and "schools in a box."

 

A Faith Like Mine (2005) begins with several chapters about faith and religion in general and then has sections about many world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and shorter chapters on several others. The photographs makes this an engaging book for children, and this is a great companion to Mary Pope Osbourne's informative One World, Many Religions: the ways we worship.  


One World, One Day (2009) by Barbara Kerley is a photographic journey around the course of a single day throughout the world. The emphasis is on children and their daily routines, and the book provides significant opportunities for discussion as multiple different versions and views are provided of basic tasks like breakfast or going to school. The end of the book includes details from the photographers about the images. (My one nitpick about this book is that the pictures are unlabeled until the footnotes at the end. I wish at least the countries were identified on each page.)

This post is just a quick look at some of my favorite books for discussing children around the world. The next parts to this series will look at other "around the world" books that focus on cultures in general and on different aspects of cultures.


Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday Challenge is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy and is a weekly roundup of educator blogs that are sharing nonfiction picture books. Click the link to check out other nonfiction posts.
Around the World in a Single Book, part 1: children | The Logonauts

10 comments:

  1. These look wonderful! I will definitely have to check them out. I think they would be a great addition to my empathy unit. Understanding other cultures are a key ingredient to being able to express and act on empathy!

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    1. Thanks, Holly! Great connection, and I'd love to hear more about your empathy unit. These are all great books for getting the 'similar but different' idea across too. I find my kids delight in learning about other kids.

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  2. Good list of books again, Katie. I hope I can find One World, One Day soon. It reminds me of the 'Day In The Life' books out years ago. My class put together a book of photos and wrote about our lives at certain parts of the day, all the same, yet all so different, like at breakfast! Thanks for all this!

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    1. Thanks, Linda. That sounds like a great class idea! Perhaps I'll have my kids do that with their Global Read Aloud buddies - it would be fun to see what they do for those daily kinds of things too.

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  3. I would love to check these out. We are starting our fall schedule and this would work great in our home. Thank you for linking up with Creative Style Linkup! Have a blessed weekend!

    Your co-host, April

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    1. Thanks so much for stopping by, April! So glad you found these books useful. Hope you'll stay tuned for the rest of the series. Part 2 is up now.

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  4. What a great series of books - I've always thought that these types of books are a good start to introducing different cultures. :)

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    1. Thanks, Myra. I have found that my third graders are especially drawn to depictions of individual children - I think they find them easy to relate to, so I love having lots of these books around.

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  5. Fantastic list. I will be pinning to come back and make sure I have access to all of these titles. Love One World, One Day.

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    1. Thanks, Carrie. These are all great - I am always accumulating extras too, as these become big hits in my room.

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