¡Mira Look!: Beyond Heroes and Holidays

As you may have already read, the theme for our first month back is multicultural education.  Many of our posts this month may not have that specific focus on Latin America that they typically do, but the topics and ideas that they cover undergird much of our approach to how and why we hope educators incorporate multicultural teaching in the classroom, and the specific Latin American resources we offer here at Vamos a Leer.

In today’s ¡Mira Look! I wanted to share one of my favorite teacher resource books, Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural, Education and Staff Development edited by Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart and Margo Okazawa-Rey. It’s an award winning educator’s guide that provides lessons and readings on topics such as how to analyze the roots of racism, investigate the impact of racism on all our lives, examine the relationship between racism and other forms of oppression such as sexism, classism, and heterosexism, and learn to work to dismantle racism in our schools, communities and the wider society.  Goodreads provides a great description of the book:

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WWW: De Colores – The Raza Experience

Logo from the De Colores blog can be found at: http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com

The libraries are loaded with children’s books that address Latino culture. Some of these books provide multifaceted, culturally honest insight into the histories and experiences of Latino people. Many do not. It’s fair to say that we can easily fill a room with “multicultural” books that are superficial or even plainly dishonest.

Luckily, De Colores: “The Raza Experience in Books for Children” has recently hit the blogosphere, reviewing and critiquing “children’s and young adult books about Raza peoples throughout the Diaspora.” The blog’s contributors–a dream team of award-winning authors, educators, community activists, and artists–have already reviewed dozens of books, creating an essential resource for parents, teachers, and librarians who are interested in moving beyond token treatment of heroes and holidays.