(ThyBlackMan.com) As parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles and adults everywhere are busy choosing holiday gifts for the children they love, books should always be at the top of the list. The right book can spark a lifelong love of reading and open up a whole new world for a child or teenager that will last far longer than a toy.
For more than 30 years, the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools program has been built around a superb collection of diverse books that reflect a wide variety of cultures and experiences. For some young scholars, the CDF Freedom Schools curriculum is the first time they’ve seen books with characters who look like them. For others, the storylines draw them in, teach them about moments in history they may not have studied in school, and make them fall in love with reading in ways they’ve never experienced. All children and young people should be able to see themselves in the books they read and be exposed to a wide range of books reflective of the nation and world we all share. But far too often these are exactly the kinds of books that are now under attack by adults seeking to limit what children and young people read and learn.
Last year, CDF celebrated National Reading Month by releasing a special CDF Freedom Schools Banned Books We Love Book List featuring a selection of titles from the CDF Freedom Schools Integrated Reading Curriculum that have now been banned in libraries, schools and institutions across the country. For adults who are committed to encouraging children and young people to celebrate themselves and all they have in common with others in a multiracial, multicultural democratic society, the holidays are an ideal time to seek out high-quality, diverse literature like this to support and share.
For kindergarten through second grade, these books include Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh; Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed, illustrated by Stasia Burrington; Smoky Night by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Diaz; Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts, illustrated by Noah Z. Jones; Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match by Monica Brown, illustrated by Sara Palacios; and Something Happened In Our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin.
For third through fifth grade, they include Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13 by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Dow Phumiruk; 14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy and Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez; Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, illustrated by Ronald Himler; Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Edel Rodriguez; and In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco.
For sixth through eighth grade, the books include Forged by Fire, by Sharon M. Draper; Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson; Discovering Wes Moore by Wes Moore; The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, and The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith. And last but not least, for ninth through 12th grade, the titles include Monster by Walter Dean Myers; Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines; and Darkness Before Dawn, Panic, and Romiette and Julio, all by Sharon M. Draper.
Share books like these with your own family and friends this season! You may be choosing the perfect gift that unlocks a new world – or that makes the child or young person holding it in their hands feel seen, known, and reassured that they are not alone.
Written by Marian Wright Edelman
Official website; http://www.childrensdefense.org
