Last time I talked about letting your children help choose their library books. They have opinions about books too. My children are given most of their books so don’t really have a great say in the ones we keep at home. But when they are at the library they have choices- that aren’t mummy or daddy’s.
However sometimes we have to be selective of the books that come into our home. Our last visit we asked the librarian to find some books that featured an ethnic group- ours. We live in a multicultural world and yet I realized the books at home weren’t really a good representation of this.
We struggled to find the right search criteria and found just a few books. Sometimes we need to purposely find things and show our children. I first really noticed it when we received Animal boogie.
Not just the swinging beat of the music CD that had us all bopping our heads but my son for the first time looked at one of the characters and said “That’s me!” It did look a little like him. We like to see ourselves and part of the love of books is escape and seeing that you could be that character. That really hit home for my preschooler.
Animal boogie is one of our favourite books from the Barefoot Books.
Sometimes you have to purposely choose books and expose your children to new things.
Other things to try
• Use the festival calendar of your country or another’s- find books/ non- fiction/dvd etc about an upcoming festival ( Chinese new year, Lent, Divali, Eid, etc)
• Seek out multicultural publishers and tales from different countries.
• Looking at your neighborhood/town/area find an ethnic group and a book to learn more about them.
• Choose books that show disability, different ethnic group to you.
Dipping into other cultures is exciting and thought provoking especially with children. Just another way you can use the library.
This is another wonderful contribution by Melitsa Avila.
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