Illustrated by Christian Robinson 

Published by G.P. Putnam’s Son 

Target Audience: Last Stop on Market Street was likely written with a target audience of young minority children who are feeling discouraged, alone, and or different’ due to their living situations or socio-economic status. 

Diversity Focus/Summary/Curricular Theme or Topic: Throughout the book diversity is shown in both negative and positive lights through a series of comparisons made by a child of his own life to those of others living in more fortunate circumstances. We begin with a young boy named CJ and his grandmother leaving church to begin their journey home. Along their journey, the young black protagonist begins to question his circumstances, wondering aloud about things like having to ride the bus while others get to drive and having to live in a ‘dirty’ part of town while his friends are able to live in nicer areas of the city. His ‘Nana,’ however, is able to put a positive spin to each and every one of CJ’s negative observations, “finding beautiful things where he [CJ] never even thought to look.” The main curricular themes in this book could be interpreted in a few ways, depending on the age group being taught. For younger children it could be “looking on the bright side,” encouraging students to make the most out of difficult situations in and out of the classroom. By validating the feelings of children in similar situations to CJ while also giving each negative aspect of their lives a positive spin, our author effectively gives a voice and sense of positivity to a group of children that are generally ignored in traditional youth's literature.  For older children, teenagers, or even adults learning about the development of young children, the book could be used to teach about the relevance of socioeconomic inequality in the lives of even some of our youngest members of society. 

Haley Goodrich

The main theme of this book is just equality and feeling comfortable with each other even if our skin colors might be different. 

The message that this book gives is that no matter how you look or what skin color you are that we are all beautiful and equal.  Another message is just acceptance and how everyone are equal everyone should accept each other no matter what race or skin color they are. There is a lot of nice illustration that makes this book easy to read and fun to look at.

Ksenija Madzarevic

            

William Galant 

Published by Henry Holt and Company 

The targeted audience for this book is to all the children in the world. The main purpose of this book is to show children that there are different shades of brown skin color. She compares the different shades of brown skin color to desserts and sweets such as dark chocolate, peanut butter and many others. She also talks about different colors of paint that will make a shade of brown. 

 

King & King is written and illustrated by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland. It is published by Tricycle Press Berkeley. 

 

The target audience of this book is for children ages 6-9, however it has lessons that are suitable for readers of all ages. This book is for anyone who doesn’t relate to the heteronormative literature that exists that normalizes stories of princes and princesses.

 

Diversity Focus: The diversity focus of this book is to deviate from the traditional prince and princess fairytales and tell the story of a prince who falls in love with a prince. 

 

Curricular Theme/ Topic The goal of this is to diversify the landscape of the stories that are being told to young children to in hopes of breeding acceptance, tolerance and empathy, and also to provide representation for children who may one day grow up to find out they too are gay. At it’s core it’s just about being true to yourself and that being yourself, whomever that is, is not only okay, in fact it’s encouraged. 

 

This book is about an older prince who has yet to marry. His mother, the Queen is tired of being the Queen so she asks that the Prince once and for all finds a princess to marry. After the prince rejects all the princesses that the Queen has chosen for him he falls in love with a prince. They get married and they live happily ever after. 

Asha Wafer

The target audience of this novel ranges from young children to adults. The purpose of the book is to provide comfort and acceptance to those that are different from the majority. Auggie, the main character of Wonder, was born with a facial deformity that makes him the target of bullying and discrimination. This book is intended to teach people that superficial differences should not be the determining factor of how we treat one another. 

The primary curricular theme in Wonder is recognizing that people are valuable and worthy of respect despite how they appear physically. At first, Auggie’s facial abnormality prevents him from being socially accepted. The students in Auggie’s class harshly judge him for his looks, interfering with him from forming quality friendships. In society, people are often unfairly judged for their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. People’s response to Auggie’s diverse appearance is not uncommon. Often times people are likely to classify others by their external looks, not giving them a fair chance regarding who they are internally. 

Wonder is about a boy named August (Auggie) who has been primarily home schooled because his facial deformity. Upon entering middle school, Auggie’s physical appearance greatly interferes with how people view him. Eventually, Auggie’s peers accept him for being the unique, lovable person he is despite his appearance. 

Brooke Levy

Illustrated by Mike Curato

 

The target audience is young children who need to learn the concept of acceptance. 

 

This book focuses on diversity in a very broad sense. Worm Loves Worm addresses the issue of same sex marriage, but it goes beyond that in that it expresses how anyone can love anyone and there are no rules. 

 

The theme of acceptance is incorporating daily in elementary school classes as teachers help to encourage students to work together and use their differences and different perspectives to their advantage. Teachers and faculty are also constantly stressing the importance of accepting people for who they are. 

 

 Worm Loves Worm is the story of two worms that are not gendered and who love each other and wish to be married. The other insects in the book are confused because they don’t understand how this marriage can happen even though it doesn’t follow the traditional format of what they think a wedding should be. 

The point of the story is to show that not everything is what people think it is supposed to be. It intends to show children how to accept people for their differences. While the story is based around two creatures who are the same wanting to be married it can be translated to acceptance in general as you see all the characters move from confusion about the worms’ situation to acceptance. Overall this book helps children have an open mind about new experiences and/or situations that are new or different to them. 

Hannah Rubinstein

 

The book focuses on many elements of diversity within a family, including: single parent households, LGBTQ parent households, adopted children households, Step mother/Step father households and Grandparent based households. 

The curricular theme in this book is that everyone has a different type of family and we should accept them all as valid.

“Families, Families, Families,” is a picture book that celebrates all types of different kinds of families. The book uses illustrations that portray animals instead of people; making the book more approachable for children who were probably eager to pick which family they were most like.

Roderic Teamer, Jr.

Author: Yangsook cho

Author/illustrator: Yangsook choi

 

The target audience is children in Pre K, 1^st, and 2^nd grade, particularly those that have come to the United States from other countries. 

 

The Name Jar focuses on the struggles children from other countries can face entering into schools in the United States. In particular this book addresses the stress of having a perceived “different” name than everyone else. 

 

Themes of The name Jar include: confidence, diversity, self-esteem, immigration, and assimilation.  

 

The illustrations depict at times how ostracized Unhei feels due to her name. In particular there is a moment where she is looking into the jar with all the potential names she could acquire. This picture offers great insight into how difficult this adjustment has been. 

 

Yangsook Cho’s Name Jar is a book about the struggles children often face moving to America. In particular a little girl name Unhei finds herself ostracized from her fellow classmates due to her name. In order to correct this disparity she decides with her classmates to put American names in jar, and select her new name and identity. At the end however she chooses to stay with her name that meant so much to her in Korea. 

 

The Name Jar offers great insight into the struggles children often face immigrating to America and attending school in the US. While this book largely focused on the strife stemming her name, ultimately it offers insight in to a plethora of other struggles children face. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of ones past and identity. A child reading this book would have a better understanding of not only how to cope with immigrating to a new place, but also how to embrace owns one identity. 

 

 

I believe that this book would be most effective read aloud using the illustrations to help the children understand the content. 

Scout Eisenberg

 

Tic Talk: Living with Tourette Syndrome

(A 9-year-old boy’s story in his own words)

Author: Dylan Peters

Illustrated by: Zachary Wendland

Painted by: Kris Taft Miller

 

Publishing Information

 

Copyright © 2007, 2009 Dylan Peters

Little Five Star: A division of Five Star Publications, Inc.

PO Box 6698

 

Target Audience

 

The book is primarily targeted toward elementary school children. Dylan himself serves as the author and the main character in an attempt to explain Tourette Syndrome to his classmates and other youngsters. The official page says that it is geared towards children 8-12 years old in grades 3-7, but this book is very much targeting adults as well. It serves all ages as it can often be used by adults to explain or understand the complicated condition in its most basic form. Additionally, it can be especially helpful for teachers as there are a few pages in the back of the book that describe useful strategies for working with children who have Tourette Syndrome.

 

 Diversity Focus

 

The book explicitly recognizes that everyone has unique differences, especially differences that are out of our control. The diversity theme seems to revolve around the general idea of acceptance and inclusivity of those with explicit differences that come from within, not external factors such as race/ethnicity. There is an emphasis on the fact that the condition described is not the defining factor of the author’s life. Rather, he simply wishes that everyone includes him as usual as he is still the same friend regardless of whatever motions or noises he makes. He concludes the story with a lesson to himself saying that he realized “it was just another day and nothing was different. Everyone else felt the same way, and I was very relieved”. It essentially carries a message of accepting everyone regardless of what we cannot control and helping to make each other comfortable with themselves in doing so.

 

 Curricular Theme/Topic

 

The entire book is meant to describe how Tourette’s works and what it looks like, but more importantly that a child with this condition cannot control it. Therefore, the main curricular theme seems to revolve around building peer relationships as most of the book shares how peers and teachers alike can go about supporting those with a particular condition that affects them in a unique way. It also has a theme of self-love and teaches the importance of accepting yourself and embracing your differences, rather than living in fear of what others make think of you because of them. Through accepting himself and becoming comfortable after educating his peers Dylan becomes much happier and much less fearful while at school, which actually helps reduce his tics in the long run.

 

Illustrations Analysis

 

The illustrations are all drawn by a friend of Dylan’s, but painted by an adult artist. Each page has one side dedicated to text, while the other side is a picture representation of what scenario that text was describing. Given that the author and illustrator are young students who went to school together, it is likely that the illustrations are made to actually look like their school grounds. With the exception of the cover, the entire book’s illustrations are black and white. However, there are various shades from white to black used on the skin of both male and female characters. This suggests that Dylan and his friend were portraying characters of various genders and races.

 

Summary

 

This book begins with a 9-year-old boy named Dylan who was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome when he was four years old. Dylan describes the condition itself, the process of the diagnosis, and what tics are and how they are uncontrollable movements or noises made by those diagnosed with Tourette’s. He talks about his frustration with them and the stress that comes with starting a new school year because he wanted to keep his diagnosis a secret. The book follows his story from his preschool diagnosis to the third grade where he decided to openly share his secret with the class. More and more people began to notice his tics that he was trying to cover up and he became frustrated, so he talked to his mom who told him that the best thing to do was accept what he cannot change. He then realized that things could be worse and he and his mom presented an explanation to the class where they emphasized that differences make each of us special, resulting in acceptance by his peers.

 

Reading Strategies

 

One good strategy for reading this book is guided oral reading. There are quite a few difficult words to pronounce as it does include some medical terms, and may therefore also require some help with both pronunciation and definitions. The book does provide definitions for the specific terms used, however some students may need further clarification. Another strategy that can be useful in understanding this book could be direct instruction of terms. Prior to reading the book, it is possible that teachers can incorporate some of the terms into vocabulary lessons or spelling tests. This may allow for future understanding when the words and pronunciation are already known or are going to be explained afterwards.

 

Adam McAteer

LeUyen Pham

Publishing information (copyright publisher)

Yearling

Target audience:

The audience that this book caters to most is grades 1 through 4, or ages 6 to 9.  While the novel is fairly easy to read and doesn’t use many strong vocabulary words, it is a interesting take on overcoming anxiety in a classroom setting and somewhat long. In terms of exact reading level, the book was given a 600 in regards to its Lexile measure (a scale used nationally to determine reading levels of books) This book is great for shy students that have trouble contributing in the classroom. 

Diversity focus(es) - see portrayal of characters (Willard Hall article, pg. 82)

The book is centered around Alvin, the main character. He is an asian student in a school in Concord, Massachusetts. While coping with already being a minority, Alvin struggles to fit in because he get extremely anxious about participating in class. 

Potential curricular themes/topics addressed (consider how to naturally integrate these titles into the curriculum when appropriate).

Alvin deals with being different everyday, and in the classroom he copes to fit in when new material is introduced. From being nervous about performing his shakespeare dialogue (being it includes curse words) to in depth examinations of Gauguin and Frida Khalo, the book covers a lot of important history while detailing Alvin’s transition from shy to superhero. 

For the picture books you need to provide a 1-2 sentence analysis of the illustrations.

The illustrations fill the book and always provide small contextual details that enhance the book. With quick strokes, Pham captures specific emotions of characters and helps to build their personalities. 

Your own summary of the book (not a summary from the Internet) in 2-4 sentences.

Alvin is an Asian American second grader and is afraid of everything. From the elevators at school to girls to school, he detests it all. He does not speak in class to answer questions and he does not speak to his peers. Yet, at home, its a different story. Instead of shy and introverted, Alvin is loud and explosive, going by the alias named Firecracker Man, a superhero brother who wants to grow up to be just like his dad.

A critical and thoughtful analysis of the cultural perspective of the book in 50-75 words (4-8 sentences). The objective is to read “literature of ethnic diversity-by and about people of color” (Yokota, 2001). You may also explore gender.

While Look does provide important aspects of Chinese American heritage in the book, there is still room left to provide more. In the family setting, there is a lot of information given in regards to cantonese vocabulary. Also, Look employs a lot of food references in the backdrop. The book does address Alvin’s shyness in school, but provides no real solution to it besides his growth at home. All in all, the book seamlessly integrates a lot of Chinese-American themes but it fails in regards to spelling out the reasoning behind Alvin’s “mutism” in the classroom. 

John Kevane

Summary: 
In this book, the young girl picks flowers in the spring for her grandmother. As the seasons go on, it is obvious that her grandmother is aging. After her grandmother had passed away, When spring comes back around, she feels more connected with her grandmother after picking flowers.

Laura Bailey

Written by Carole Boston Weatherford 

Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon

 

The target audiences for this book are older children of all ages who feel different than their peers and need encouragement and inspiration. Miss Lena Horne battled stereotypes her whole life and became the first African American actress to be offered a studio contract. 

 

This story tells the biography of Lena Horne, a civil rights activist who battled stereotypes to become the first African American actress offered a studio contract. Still, this was not enough because the majority of roles she was offered included maids and nannies, and she strived to break these norms and would be offered a main role. This story shows a glimpse of what life was like during segregation in a way that is appropriate for children yet very effective. It is an inspirational story of a strong woman who worked hard at her job while also being a strong member of the Civil Rights movement.

 

Megan Leffew

2. Floella Benjamin/Margaret Chamberlain

3. Frances Lincoln Children’s Books 2007

4. Kids of all ages

5. Children of all cultures/kids trying to figure out who they 

6. Importance of family and compromise 

7.The use of the color attracts the eye. The pictures help deliver a clear understanding of what the characters are doing.

8. The little girl Albian has two grandmas granny Vero and granny Rose. Both of her grandmas love spending time with her. They both wanted to keep her while her parents left. The grannies had an argument on who gets to keep her so Albian tells them that both of them can.

9.Granny Vero was from the Virgin Islands of Trinidad, and granny rose was from Yorkshire town of Barnsley (England). Because of being from two different places there cultures vary, in the book they wanted to do everything different with there granddaughter such as what they cook or what games they play. The author limited the cultural diversity, however I feel that children of all cultures of all races and cultures could relate to this book.

10.The first evidence based reading strategies to help a child comprehend this book would be to pre teach the concept before reading. Predicting what is going to happen next in the book would also be helpful. Vocabulary in the book could be explained by using different context of the word. Acting out the story is another strategy that would provide a visual explanation. 

Author/Illustrator: written by: Carolyn Robertson, Illustrations by: Sophie Humphreys

Published 2014 by Sparklypoo Publications London UK

Children of gay couples

Focuses on the fact that same-sex parents are no different than any other parents, and although these families might not be traditional, they are still a family

Themes/topics: acceptance, types of families, sexuality

The illustrations are very vibrant and simplistic. I think the colorful pictures represent that same-sex couples are no less fun and exciting than any other couple. And the simplicity of the illustrations goes to show that there is normalcy in same-sex families

This book starts off by saying that the main character is different than other kids because most kids only have one mom or one dad, but she has two dads. She puts a positive spin on the fact that she’s different by saying all the reasons she is lucky to have two dads; for example if one dad isn’t around she has another dad to spend time with. She also explains that she is different because she was not birthed by her dads, rather she was adopted. She lists all the things she does with her dads, which are no different than the activities children do with their moms and dads. 

It is important for children to be able to see themselves represented in the literature they read, that way they feel that they can relate to these characters. It isn’t common to find a children’s book in which gay-marriage is represented. It’s important to expose children to the fact of life that not all people or families are the same, and that that’s ok. This exposure at a young age is likely to promote a sense of normalcy surrounding the matter, and allow them to be more accepting in the future. I think the book Two Dads gets this point across really well. It’s a very simple and short book, and just goes to show that same-sex families aren’t so different than any other family after all.