Wow, I LOVE Reading! Mrs. Gibbs' Book Blog: Culture and Diversity

  Pinkney, G.J. & Pinkney, J. (1992). BACK HOME. Dial Books for young readers.   Even though eight-year-old Ernestine lives with her family up North, "back home" is Lumberton, North Carolina, the place where she was born and where her mama grew up. She feels at home as soon as she gets off of the train. The countryside is green and lush. She loves working on the family farm and spending time with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She learns her roots by visiting the cabin she was born in and seeing her grandmother’s grave. This visit home is based on Gloria Pinkney's own childhood memories of family reunions back home. This is Gloria Pinkney’s first book, and the beginning of her and husband and illustrator Jerry Pinkney creating wonderful works of art together for children to enjoy. The only cultural marker I found in the book was when Aunt Beula used the endearment “chile.”  The rest of the story could be about any southern farmer’s family of the time-white or bla...

  Nelson, K. (2011). HEART AND SOUL: THE STORY OF AMERICA AND AFRICAN               AMERICANS. Balzer+Bray.   Nelson begins the story with an introduction that talks about the many triumphs and hardships African Americans have overcome in America. Nelson then writes individual mini-chapters about significant events such as slavery, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, emancipation,  Jim Crow Laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and the vote for women.  Each section discusses significant members of the African American community and their contributions.  The author writes from the perspective of an unnamed narrator and reviews significant events in African American history.  They include the story of Pap “the only Africa-born slave in my family.”  Obviously, Pap is a decedent of the narrator. The book says Pap was captured from his village in 1850 as a child. It tells of his time...

             Williams-Garcia, R. (2010). ONE CRAZY SUMMER. Amistad.   Eleven-year-old Delphine, nine-year-old Vonetta, and seven-year-old Fern, live in Brooklyn, New York. However, the girls’ father sends them to Oakland, California one summer to stay with their estranged mother, Cecile, who refers to herself as Nzilla. Cecile abandoned her children when Fern was a baby. Their grandmother always called her self-centered and crazy- not the motherly type. When the girls arrive at the California airport, Cecile meets them, and she is every bit what their grandma had said. Shed forbids them to enter her kitchen, which is Cecile's workplace. She prints her poetry here on her printing press, along with the occasional publication for the Black Panther Party. Every day she would send the girls to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. This is where they meet Sister Mukumbu. The three sisters get taught about the movement. Mukumbu explains what the...

  Watson, R. (2017). PIECING ME TOGETHER. Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books. ISBN 9781681191058 Jade, who is also the book's narrator, is a sixteen-year-old African American student attending a mostly white private school in Portland, Oregon on a scholarship. Jade is from a poor neighborhood and is different from the rest of her school. Heeding her mother's advice, Jade works to take advantage of every opportunity presented to her. Hoping to be afforded the opportunity to study abroad so she can utilize her fluent Spanish Skills, Jade is instead offered the chance to be paired with a mentor in the Women to Women program by her school's guidance counselor. Paired with Maxine, Jade initially has high hopes for this mentorship, hopes which are dashed when Maxine proves unreliable, and Jade begins to wonder if it is she or Maxine who is getting more out of the program. Jade grows through the program and begins to act on the realization that she needs to make her own opportun...

  Fox, Mem., & Jenkins, S. (2009) HELLO BABY! Beach Lane Books. ISBN 9781416985136   The human baby in the story meets different animal baby’s including a monkey, porcupine, eagle, gecko, lion, hippo, leopard, elephant, warthog, crocodile, zebra, and an owl.  To the human baby’s parent, he is the biggest treasure of all!  It celebrates the bond between parent and child.     This is a charming children’s picture book. A good tool to use when studying poetry in the younger grades. The artwork is stunning.  There are no culture markers in the book.  I did some research on Mem Fox and discovered she is from Australia.  All of her books are published their first.  She is considered one of Australia’s bestselling authors.   On her website, https://memfox.com/ Mem Fox shares the story of how she came up with the idea for HELLO BABY! “I’m often asked where my ideas come from, and I can usually explain. But with Hello Baby! I remem...

  Buitrago, J., Yockteng, R., & Amado, E. (2018). ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GARDEN. Groundwood Books. ISBN 9781554989836.   ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GARDEN is about a city girl learning to accept the change brought about by her parents’ separation when she is taken to her grandmother’s house in the country and befriended by an owl, a frog, and a mouse. When her father leaves her at her grandmother’s house, the young girl feels abandoned and lonely. Her mother has moved to another country, and the girl wasn’t paying attention when her father explained what was happening. And she hardly remembers her grandmother. After going up to her room she decides to venture out into the nighttime garden where she meets an owl, a frog, and a mouse. They take her on a tour of her extraordinary new world. When she gets back in the morning, her grandmother explains that her father won’t be back for a long time. The girl tells her that she wants to be able to spend time in the garden wit...