Multicultural Children's Literature
A 10-month Author Study
About the Project
Hello, and welcome to my blog! My name is Kelsey. I'm a kindergarten teacher by day and I'm also pursuing my MA in Teaching by night/weekend/every other minute available to me. My aim in creating this website is two-fold:
1) To expose the children in my class to the work of excellent children's authors.
2) To share book recommendations, lesson plans, resources for finding and using children's literature, and my own experiences teaching with these books in the classroom.
This website represents the culmination of my research into children's literature as well as my experiences sharing wonderful books with the children in my classroom. The project is ongoing, and as the year goes on I will be adding and updating the author pages as I teach them in class. Feel free to contact me with feedback or questions about the project. I hope it is a resource for you and your children. Happy reading!
Why Multicultural Children's Literature?
In a recent study, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison reviewed 3,200 of the 5,000 children’s books published in 2013; they found that only 98 (less than 3%) of those books featured African American characters. Even fewer were written by an African American author, which raises questions about their authenticity. This small number actually represents an increase in books by black authors; in 1985, when the center began keeping these statistics, there were only 18 published! Similar results were found for books featuring American Indians, Latinos, and Asians/Pacific Islanders.
It is important that children see themselves reflected in the books that they read not only so that they grow to love reading, but also that they feel their lives and experiences are valued. Walter Dean Myers (one of the authors featured on this site) has explored the problem with this lack of multicultural children's literature in this country in an article titled Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books? He writes:
Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?
Click below to view the study's results and to read Myers' excellent opinion piece.
Children's Books by and about People of Color in the United States.
Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books? by Walter Dean Myers
Why Author Study?
I wanted to choose authors whose work features characters that are representive of the children in my kindergarten class. For this reason the project will focus mainly on the work of African American and Latino authors. The California Common Core English Language Arts Standards for Kindergarten require that students are able to name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story. They also require that kindergarteners compose opinion, informative, and narrative writing. This project takes the form of a 10-month author study to help kindergarteners understand the work that an author does and that, as they learn to create writing themselves, they too are authors. By focusing on one Author of the Month each month, my hope is that in their reading outside of school, students (and parents) will be able to pursue more books by the authors that they have learned about and enjoyed in class. The authors that I have selected for this project have a produced a large body of children's books. They are respected in the field of multicultural children's literature and are award-winning writers. Some have received the Coretta Scott King Award for their books, which honors African American authors and illustrators of children's books. Others have received the Pura Belpré Award for excellence in Latino children's literature.
Learn more about the Coretta Scott King Book Awards.
Learn more about the Pura Belpré Award.
View the CA Common Core English Language Arts & Literacy Standards.
Contact Me
Email: kelsey.henderson144@gmail.com
E-portfolio: Kelsey Henderson's E-Portfolio
Tumblr: http://kelsey160.tumblr.com