Choosing Multicultural Books

Reading is Fundamental Guidelines for Choosing Multicultural Books

Selecting Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Materials: Suggestions for Service Providers by Rosa Milagros Santos and Debbie Reese (1999) (Same article from 2001 digest)

Fifty Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know Compiled by Ginny Moore Kruse and Kathleen T. Horning of the Cooperative Children's Book Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Same article on NEA web site.

Scholastic 's How To Choose The Best Multicultural Books : Divided by ethnic groups. Yumi Heo is quoted.

Why Multicultural Books are Important

Thoughts on Not Seeing Oneself by Debbie Reese Doctoral Student, Early Childhood Education, College of Education, University of Illinois. (1997)

Additional Resources

Chen, Shu-Hsien Lai. Asian American literature in school libraries. Journal of Educational Media & Library Sciences 39 no3 (2002), pp.2 51- 2 68.

Leitich Smith, Cynthia

Rockman, Hazel. Against Borders : Promoting Books for a Multicultural World. Chicago : American Library Association, 1993.

Sharing Cultures: Asian American Children's Authors: A Selected Bibliography. Prepared by ALSC International Relations Committee 2001, this bibliography was distributed to attendees of the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table/ALSC/APALA presentation "Sharing Cultures: Asian-American Children's Writers" on June 16, 2001, in San Francisco.

Personal Notes and Thoughts

I am trying to include as many as possible of the excellent East Asian Children's books published. I am focusing on the newer books, but have included a few old favorites. Where necessary, I've included the best books I could find. I want to personally view all the books I include so that can be something of a limiting factor.

I've read some terrible books related to East Asia. Thankfully the worst examples are from many years ago. I'll describe one example in detail. At a university library, I found Louis Slobodkin's Yasu and the Strangers (The Macmillan Company, New York. 1965). The picture book looked suitable for ages four to eight. The story deals with Yasu, his brother Kyto (sic), and a group of school children that visit Nara, the ancient Japanese capital. Yasu sees his first foreigners and thinks they are tall and fat. Yasu gets lost and helps some lost foreigners find their way back to the busses with the help of a policeman. It shows an us/we mentality. Japanese are all small and thin. Foreigners are tall, fat, and helpless. Finally, didn't Yasu's mother teach him not to talk to strangers? The illustrations look like they were done in pen and ink, pastels, and watercolors reminiscent of the illustrations in the Madeline books. Note: Kyto is not a Japanese name.

I have left out a number of folklore stories based on personal likes and dislikes. However, I also left out a picture book of The Voice of the Great Bell by Lafcadio Hearn retold by Margaret Hodges. This story has a daughter sacrificing her life to save her father by jumping into the molten metals being used to form a great bell. I found the story horrifying and not the example I would want to give a daughter.

I found good non-fiction books on East-Asia surprisingly hard to find. I was discouraged by photographs purportedly showing the modern nations that looked like they were taken ten or twenty years ago. The photographs would mislead children into thinking the nation being discussed was less modern than is really the case.