The Logonauts

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Diverse Children's Books #diversekidlit

Diverse Children's Books is a brand new book-sharing meme designed to promote the reading and writing of children's books that feature diverse characters. This community embraces all kinds of diversity including (and certainly not limited to) diverse, inclusive, multicultural, and global books for children of all backgrounds.

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<a href="http://www.thelogonauts.com/search/label/DiverseKidLit" target="_blank" width=200 height=200 title="DiverseKidLit"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji7ZBfm6Wm1URuUDCSpRoSVS1MzHZ9mViyikW9US7a9l9zxr6qXwcs_hTfSXpj_R89mSEiLemZj02yfTJzDlQ4KhbtROOwCPaebWFMJNCjws9nCTxJ32Lgqmita5n3Zrv0duDRRWzOC1o/s1600/diversekidlit-logo-1000px.jpg" alt="DiverseKidLit" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

We encourage everyone who shares to support this blogging community by visiting and leaving comments for at least three others. Please also consider following the hosts on at least one of their social media outlets. Spread the word using #diversekidlit and/or adding our button to your site and your diverse posts.

We hope this community will grow into a great resource for parents, teachers, librarians, publishers, and authors! Our next linkup will be Saturday, May 21st and will continue on the first and third Saturdays of each month.

Most Clicked Post from Last Time

The most clicked post from our previous #diversekidlit is Diverse Children's Books for Earth Day by Rebekah at The Barefoot Mommy. The post provides a great overview of six different, diverse picture books that can help kids appreciate and celebrate the Earth.

Hosted By:

Katie @ The Logonauts
Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest

Beth @ Pages and Margins
Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest

Gayle Swift, Author of ABC, Adoption & Me
Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Google+

Marjorie @ Mirrors Windows Doors
Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest

Mia @ Pragmatic Mom
Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest / Instagram

Myra @ Gathering Books
Blog / Twitter / Facebook

Guest Host for May

Shoumi Sen, Author of Toddler Diaries
Blog / Twitter / Facebook

Want to be notified when the next #diversekidlit linkup goes live?

Interested in joining as a host or an occasional co-host? Contact katie at thelogonauts.com.

(Never participated in a linkup before? Please click here for a more detailed step-by-step.)

An InLinkz Link-up

Friday, May 6, 2016

How to Find High-Quality Diverse Literature for Children

Last month I launched #DiverseKidLit in partnership with several other bloggers. Our goal is to promote the reading and writing of children's books that feature diverse characters, and it has been so encouraging to see so many different bloggers and book recommendations!

One really important question has been raised in discussion and comments: how do we find and evaluate high-quality diverse literature?

To that end, I have put together a series of questions to consider when seeking or evaluating books. I would love for this to become an evolving discussion and to hear thoughts from others about how to find and celebrate the best that diverse literature has to offer!

Questions to Ask when Finding or Evaluating High-Quality Diverse Literature

What is the author's background?

One of the first things I want to know when evaluating a diverse book is more information about the author's background and experience. What qualifications do they have related to the subject of their book and its characters? Are they a member of the country / culture / ethnic group / etc. depicted in the story?

Often a cursory glance at the author's bio on the book flap can give you a pretty good starting point. Some potential red flags for me include

an author writing about another country with no mention of their connections / travel / references in that country
an author writing about a culture or ethnic group that is not their own with no mention of their connections / travel / references with that group
an author writing a nonfiction book with little or no backmatter (i.e. no bibliography, no author's note with more information)
an author writing a folktale from another country or culture, especially if there is no mention of consultation or discussion with members of that country or culture

How are the characters portrayed? Do they hew closely to standard stereotypes or are the characters balanced and well-rounded?

High-quality diverse literature features characters that are interesting, three-dimensional. Even children quickly spot "cardboard characters" - characters that have only one quality or are presented in a simplistic fashion. Pay attention to the characters and their portrayal in a story. They should have more going on for them than just the fact that they are diverse.

(For example, in my review of Chandra's Light: a story from Nepal, I shared my concern that the book was clearly written as a vehicle to tell kids about how solar lights change lives, and the main point of the characters in the books seemed to be to stand there and be poor.)

Has this book won any awards?

Awards are a great way of finding books that others consider to be high quality. However, not all awards are created equally. When it comes to diverse literature, it is worth paying attention to awards focused on the specific type of diversity in the book. I have been curating a lengthy list of Diverse Book Awards if you want examples and recommendations.

An Example

I don't like to bad-mouth books, but I do tend to be very honest in my reading and reviews. Some books I simply never post about, while with others, I might raise some questions or concerns that I have. I thought it might be helpful to walk you through a recent encounter I had with an author and her books that raised some red flags for me.

As part of World Read Aloud Day, many authors offer free Skype visits to classrooms. I was a bit late signing up, but I was able to request a talk with Alma Fullerton, whose name I recognized from having written some picture books about Africa that I hadn't yet read. (We were studying Africa at the time.) I quickly requested her three Africa picture books from the library.

Though praised for their "sparse language," I found the stories themselves disappointing. Community Soup is an odd mix of half a Kenya "Mary Had a Little Lamb" parody and half "hey there's a goat in our garden, and I think this is supposed to be comical." A Good Trade is about a Ugandan boy who sees the aid worker truck arriving and brings them a flower as thanks for getting new shoes. In A Cloud of Dust is about a truckload of bikes arriving in Tanzania and the main character doesn't get one but then she shares someone else's, the end.

My "red flags" included

books whose characters are overly simplistic or seemed to offer nothing beyond a basic stereotype (This is a poor kid. Look, he carries water on his head. Now he has shoes, yay.)
no author's notes with information about the countries or the author's connections (In A Cloud of Dust is the only one with an author's note, which is about organizations that donate bikes to Africa, nothing about the author)
an author with no stated background or experience with the country (Alma Fullerton is Canadian, and none of her biographies mention connections to Africa)

Our Skype visit revealed what I suspected: she has never been to Africa and has no personal experience with any of the countries depicted in the books. In an egregious misstatement, she also referred to "the country of Africa" during our conversation. (She did immediately correct to "the continent of Africa," but even my third graders noticed that one.)

I want to share diverse books with my students that present authentic, nuanced stories about people and places. In my opinion, these books reveal just surface ideas based on minimal research and simplistic conceptions about "Africa." Someone who has never lived in or even visited a country is going to have a hard time going beyond the basics to share something deep or authentic.

On the other hand, the books have been recognized with various awards. (Read between the lines, however, and many of the awards are local or Canada-specific awards.) I am not bringing these books up to say that they are "bad" books - there is nothing intentional hateful or negative or wrong in them, but I am saying that we should hold diverse books up to a high standard and, for me, these books do not meet expectations.

A final note...

Many of these questions and thoughts above were written with the idea of ethnic or cultural diversity in mind, but another point of the #DiverseKidLit meme is to promote the many, many axes of diversity within our books and our communities. We should hold books about LGBTQ characters or characters with special needs or socioeconomically-diverse characters up to the same scrutiny and should celebrate great examples of these books too. We hope you'll join us!

Please share your thoughts or additional questions to consider in the comments below.

Share your posts with #DiverseKidLit

Poetry Friday: Echo Echo

Echo Echo: Reverso Poems about Greek Myths (2016). Marilyn Singer has done it again! If you have not yet read either of her two previous poetry books: Mirror, Mirror and Follow, Follow, then you are in for a treat. These "reverso" poems will blow you away. Not only are they interesting an engaging poems in their own right, but they can be read in two ways: from top to bottom and from bottom to top. You have to see one to truly understand (click on the image to see it larger).

You can help but be both immediately amazed and inspired. Each poem is like a delicately-crafted jigsaw puzzle, with the pieces falling into place to create two contrasting points of view around a familiar story or myth.

I shared this poem with my students last week during our regular Poetry Friday time, and several of them decided to take up the challenge of writing their own reverso poems. I am delighted to share a few of their efforts here.

Cold Air, by: Gretta

Breathe breathe through the winter.
The smell of the cold smooth air.
Let it peacefully go through your nose.

Let it peacefully go through your nose.
The smell of the cold smooth air.
Breathe breathe through the winter.

Reverso, Yoda Translation, by: Nathaniel

Force you must learn
To become Jedi
When Jedi you are, awesome like a boss you will be

When Jedi you are, awesome like a boss you will be
To become Jedi
Force you must learn

Voldemort and Harry, by: Ava and Leila

Fear me
When I touch you
Pain you will feel
I shall kill you!

I shall kill you!
Pain you will feel
When I touch you
Fear me

Echo Echo proved so popular in our classroom that it made it to the championship round of our April Poetry Madness. Several students shared their thoughts about why it was their favorite:

"Echo, Echo inspired me to write reverso poems, and I think that reverso poems are so cool, the way that they are different and the same and beautiful!"

"Two voice poems are my favorite!"

Have you ever tried a reverso poem?

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Raising Global Citizens - discuss the "village"

I am a member of the Multicultural Kid Blog community, and one of the central issues of the group is the idea of raising global citizens. With my students, we spend the year exploring the history, geography, and culture of each continent, with an emphasis on global awareness and fostering connections. One of the books that always generates an incredible amount of discussion among my students is If the World Were a Village by David J. Smith and illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong.

Now in its second edition, If the World Were a Village: a book about the world's people uses manageable statistics to help kids grasp the enormity of talking about the whole world all at once. The book asks the reader to imagine that the population of the world is represented by a village of 100 people, where each "person" in the village actually represents around 66 million real people.

Each two-page spread focuses on a different feature of the global village. Every year I use this book as a read aloud and encourage my students to guess about some of the facts about the global village. The book begins with fairly straight-forward topics like how many people come from each continent, how many people speak the most widely-spoken languages, how many people follow which religions, etc.

The guessing gets everyone engaged, and kids are often surprised by some of the results. ("Wait, if there are 250 chickens in the global village but only 100 people, does that mean there are MORE chickens in the world than people??" Yes, yes it does.)

As the book progresses, however, it delves into more and more serious topics: access to education, unequal distributions of wealth and food, uneven access to clean air and water, etc. It really forces kids to think about how their lives compare to the rest of the village. I usually time my reading of this book around Earth Day, with ties in well with the environmental concerns raised by the book.

As one of my students so thoughtful noted this year, "It seems to me that there are the fewest number of people like me in the global village." Then he went on to list some of the statistics, "I have access to clean water, I have enough food to eat ... " If you want a book that will make kids think and help them realize their privileged place in the world, this is an excellent way to get the conversation started.

You can find more resources for the book on its page for Kids Can Press.

Monday, May 2, 2016

April Poetry Madness Winner Is ...

And the winner is ... Love that Dog (2001) by Sharon Creech!

As part of our poetry unit we read Love that Dog as a class, sharing and discussing the same poems as Jack and his classmates, as well as trying them out for ourselves. This meant that Love that Dog holds a special place in the hearts of many of my students. (Read a full review including how I use this book to teach poetry.)

Here are a few of their comments and thoughts about why they voted for Love that Dog:

"Because it was a great book and enjoyable to read."
"It is awesome!"
"I picked this book because it is about dogs."
"Even though it was sad, this is the better book."
"I think it is a good example of how you can tell a story with a poem."

Thanks so much to everyone who joined in and voted!

View All Previous Rounds

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? #IMWAYR 5/2/16

It's Monday! What are you reading? was started by Sheila at Book Journey and was adapted for children's books from picture books through YA by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers. You can visit either site for a round up of blogs sharing their weekly readings and thoughts or search Twitter for #IMWAYR.

Last Weeks' Posts

April Poetry Book Madness! April has ended, which means our winner has been decided ... !

Book Club: Walk Two Moons. This is one of my all-time favorite books, and it makes an excellent book for discussions. The post also includes major topics covered in the book and suggested page breakdowns.

May on the Logonauts. This is a new, monthly feature where I highlight posts published in a given month during previous years.

Join the Diverse Children's Book Linkup! There's still time to stop by and check out this brand-new book meme featuring books for children that showcase the diversity of our world.

Picture Books

Where's the Elephant? (2016) by Barroux. This book puts an environmental twist on your average "seek-and-find" style of book. The elephant and his companions become easier and easier to find as their habitat diminishes. The author's note explains how he was inspired by the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest. So, then why an elephant? Maybe this is supposed to be a "universal" story, but there are no elephants in the Brazilian rain forest, plus these stylized trees look like a deciduous forest from the north woods of the US or Canada. Weird.

Young Adult

The Honest Truth (2015) by Dan Gemeinhart. I had heard many good things about this book, so I will admit to being disappointed. The character and his plight did not draw me in, nor could I understand his (or his friend's) justifications for their actions. A story like The Fault in Our Stars does so much to draw you into the characters and their impending cancers, but this story attempts to do that telling more in flashback, which seemed too little too late. I'd be interested in hearing from others who had more positive reactions.

Happy Reading!

Sunday, May 1, 2016

May on The Logonauts

Now that The Logonauts is approaching it's two year blogoversary (!), I wanted to start a new feature that would highlight great posts, lessons, and book lists from previous years. To that end, I thought I would do a round-up style post once a month featuring posts published during that month in previous years.