Book Giveaway: Me llamo María Isabel/My Name is María Isabel

Good afternoon, everyone!

Congratulations to the winner of last week’s giveaway and thank you to all who commented!  This week, you can win Alma Flor Ada’s book, Me llamo María Isabel, and the English translation, My Name is María Isabel.  According to Alma Flor’s website, this book tells the story of “María Isabel, a Hispanic child growing up in the U.S., [who] begins having problems in her new classroom when her teacher changes her name to Mary. This compelling portrait of an experience common to many language minority children inspires discussions on self-identity and biculturalism.”  School Library Journal suggests this book for grades three and four.

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¡Mira Look! Our next theme: Race in YA Literature

“Hopscotch Kids”
–Flickr CC user Elvert Barnes

As Katrina and I start our next theme of posts, ‘Race in YA Literature’, I want to spend today discussing race and giving you some resources for how to pinpoint and discuss racial stereotyping in text. Without getting too dogmatic, I want to stress the importance of discussing race with our kids. Race is a socially constructed concept used to categorize and create hierarchy among people. There is nothing biological about it, that is just an argument used to make it seem grounded in science and therefore true.