We’re sorting through our shelves today and after some recent talks with friends I wanted to post a photo of some of the books I especially love to talk with kids about a variety of topics – cultural and religious differences, race & ethnicity, gender, strong women role models, etc. I’m not linking to all of them because there are lots. 🙂 But these are some I enjoyed enough to own (and collected a lot through the library used book store and Paperback Swap.)
Some of these were birthday gifts for the kids from us, friends and family as well. Oh, and Scholastic book sales!
Obviously there’s some overlap, there are religious books about strong women (Miriam’s Cup) and a book with a female heroine but it’s about segregation in the south so I’m just lumping them all together into wonderful books for your family library. I left out some books like our biographies book that has a really good split of female and male figures, but these were just the ones that jumped out at me as coming from lists we liked for cultural and gender teaching to kids.
What books would you suggest?
(Oh, Olivia & The Fairy Princesses is included because she goes through strong female role models she could be and different careers she could pursue and ends with deciding even better than a princess is the queen – because she rules. 🙂 )
I think The Librarian of Basra would make a nice addition to this collection. It has a female heroine and is multicultural. The book tells the story of the (female) librarian of Basra, Iraq, who saves the library’s books before the Iraq War. It would make a good vehicle for discussing the war too. (It does say that the city was bombed and shows buildings burning. It does not show or discuss death or harm to people.) I bought it years ago to save for future children. 🙂
Shana, thank you! Added it to my wish list on Paperback and requested it from the library. 🙂 Please let me know if you think of any other good additions, I really appreciate it.