Celebrating Multicultural Children's Book Day

It's time to celebrate Multicultural Children's Book Day. This is a celebration of diversity in literature for young people launched by children’s reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom. You can find tons of links to many multicultural blog posts at their blogs too. At Pomelo Books, Janet (Wong) and I are so pleased to be sponsors of this great celebration. In fact, we're so pleased that diversity has been a hallmark of each of our Poetry Friday anthologies. We've featured diverse poets, diverse themes and topics, and even bilingual poetry in Spanish/English. 

This week, Janet is presenting along with poets Julie Larios, Charles Waters, and Carmen T. Bernier-Grand at Dearborn Park Elementary School in Seattle, a Title I school that educates children who are Asian American, African American, and Latino. Children even learn Mandarin or Spanish starting in kindergarten! 

I'm featuring poems by each of these lovely peeps today to celebrate Multicultural Children's Book Day (officially January 27). Join the Twitter Party on Jan. 27 at 8pm with #ReadYourWorld. There will be great conversation and lots of giveaways too! 

Meanwhile, here are lovely gems by Charles Waters, Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, Julie Larios and Janet Wong. Enjoy!

Have you ever heard Charles Waters present? He's a hoot, a ham, and a force! This poem by him is from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations and is perfect for launching a celebration of Black History Month in February-- plus he has many other poems celebrating African Americans to use any time of the year! 

Are you familiar with the work of Carmen T. Bernier-Grand? I just love her poem biographies. This featured poem below is a bilingual (Spanish/English) poem from our science anthology, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, as well as the student edition, The Poetry of Science. I just love the Spanish title "Compu-nerdo," don't you?

Julie Larios is the lovely lady behind the poetry of Yellow Elephant and Imaginary Menagerie, among others. Plus her blog, The Drift Record, is not-to-be-missed. Her lyrical poem, "Names" (below) from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School makes my mouth water!

Finally, you know how much I love Janet (Wong), her poetry, and her endless advocacy for diversity AND poetry. Her poem below, "Grandfather's Chopsticks" is from our first book together, The Poetry Friday Anthology K-5. 

Remember to check out all the resources at Multicultural Children's Book Day and join the Twitter gathering, too. It's so great to see diversity celebrated so widely by so many. Don't miss the party!