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Announcement: Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party (and Giveaways)

Please join us for our Multicultural Children's Book Day

Win 1 of 12 Book Bundles! Giving away Book Bundles every 6 minutes!

Twitter Party

Friday, January 27th

9 pm to 10 pm EST

Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld

We will be discussing the state of children's book publishing and giving away diversity book bundles every six minutes! We invite EVERYONE to join us: authors, publishers, parents, caregivers, librarians, KidLit lovers. You don't have to be an author or publisher sponsor to join us! Let's talk about our favorite multicultural and diverse children's books, authors, and illustrators!

How do you join the Twitter party? Just use hashtag #ReadYourWorld to find us. When you tweet, use the hashtag so everyone can find you!

Register below to be able to win!!

Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party

This month Global Learning for Kids is exploring Singapore. I requested some books about Singapore from my contact at Tuttle Publishing. She sent me six books and a traveling map. We shared Singapore Children's Favorite Stories with you a few weeks ago as one of our posts for Multicultural Kid Blogs' Asian Pacific-American Heritage Month Series and Giveaway. (Have you entered the giveaway yet?) The first book we are going to share is Singapore: World City by Kim Inglis.

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me copies of these books free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

May brings us into Asian Pacific-American Heritage Month. To celebrate I always like to read some Asian stories. Luckily I have a contact at Tuttle Publishing. Tuttle Publishing focuses on Asia in their books. They are also a supporter of the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Giveaway for this month. As such they sent me a copy of Malaysian Children's Favourite Stories by Kay Lyons and illustrated by Martin Loh which is the only prize from them I have not previously reviewed as well a copy of Singapore Children's Favourite Stories by Di Taylor and illustrations by LK Tay-Audouard. They have quite the selection of Asian countries for this series of books and I have to admit we have quite a few of them as well. Hazel always LOVES these books and never lets me donate them. Actually it looks like I am missing a few. I am guessing they may be hiding in Hazel's room.

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

It is May and that brings several things. In the United States it means Mother's Day, the end of school is near and Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. This post is the first of mine in the Multicultural Kid Blogs Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway. (Scroll down for the giveaway!) Today I am sharing with you a new cookbook from Katie Chin. This book is Katie Chin's Everyday Chinese Cookbook: 101 Delicious Recipes from My Mother's Kitchen with photographs by Masano Kawana. Katie Chin is sharing some of her mother's everyday recipes just in time for Mother's Day!!

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Goosebottom Books. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Back in January I had the pleasure of reviewing my first Goosebottom Book for Multicultural Children's Book Day. The book was Hatshepsut of Egypt and we learned about the first female pharaoh of Egypt. At the time I reviewed an e-book and loved the book, but now that I have actually seen the hardcover book I have to tell you the e-book does not do it justice. I actually passed on the book to Hazel's school since the third grade class learns about Hatshepsut during their study of Ancient Egypt. The principal loved the book as well. Along with the hard copy of Hatshepsut of Egypt I was sent five more of the books in the Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses to share with you today. I love learning about these amazing women most of whom I had not heard of previously. Update: My review of Isabella of Castile is now published.

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me copies of these book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

We have explored the lunar new year and more specifically the Chinese New Year for several years now and have tried many different crafts, recipes and books (see below for a sampling and links). We have looked at the Chinese Zodiac and as of yesterday we have begun the year of the monkey. Last year was the year of the sheep.

A Monkey Valentine Craft from a Kit

Since we are not Chinese or any of the cultures that celebrate the lunar new year, we do not do too much for our Chinese New Year except try to learn a bit about it. This year since we have an idea of the celebration and the stories behind it we decided to take a look at Chinese stories and especially ones involving the monkey. We started with Celebrating Chinese Festivals by Sanmu Tung.

This post is part of the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Diwali for Kids Series. Be sure to check out the other great posts and link up an Diwali posts you have.

As Christians we do not know much about Hinduism or Diwali. We of course turned to books to learn a bit more. We found some books that we found informative and on the right level for Hazel at the library.

This month Global Learning for Kids is exploring India. We have been reading books about India, people from India, places in India and stories from India. Today I am sharing with you a bit about India as well as some of the resources we found (some we have read and some we have not read yet) as well as a craft Hazel did with instructions from a book and minimal help from me. First a bit about India.

The Republic of India is the seventh largest country by area and the second largest by population. It has over 1.2 billion people in it! It is a country in Southeast Asia. The capital is New Delhi. It has a long history which includes the start of four religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Hinduism is the most prevalent religion there today. India has a caste system which is a social hierarchy. In 1947 the untouchables caste was declared illegal due to the discrimination that the people put into this caste endured. At many workplaces the caste system is not important. Family is important in India and many live with large patriarchal families. Many marriages are still arranged by the parents with the consent of the couple. Divorce rate is very low since marriage is considered to be for life.

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of Indian Children's Favorite Stories free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

This month we are exploring India as part of the Global Learning for Kids series. Today I thought I would focus on some Indian mathematicians and an Indian mathematical folk tale. Last month I shared the history of zero and the role the Indians played in it. First we will explore a few of the same mathematicians, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta, and introduce another Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan. The Indians had a huge influence on our current number system and mathematics. Although it was the Arabs who took their number system and made it famous.

Asian Book Reviews -- Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of these books free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

This post is part of the Multicultural Kid Blogs Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway. More details about all of this below including the giveaway!!

Since May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, I contacted my friends at Tuttle Publishing. It was a logical choice since this is their specialty. They publish books on Asian cultures, languages, and history. They have books for children and adults. It is a wonderful publishing company that puts out high quality and beautiful books. They also have provided five of the books for the giveaway below! The first book we will review is one of the prizes.

This post is part of the Asian-Pacific American Heritage Blog Series and Giveaway on Multicultural Kid Blogs. You can enter the giveaway at the end of the post. There is a link party for all Asian-Pacific American Heritage posts on Multicultural Kid Blogs. We also have a link party for Japan posts in our Global Learning for Kids this month. Next month will be India.

History of Zero:

Can you imagine a world without zero? Or perhaps you wonder why we need to represent nothing at all? For centuries there was no mark or symbol of zero. The history of the number zero begins in Asia. It is believed that the first people to have a symbol for zero were the Babylonians. The Babylonians had inherited the counting system of the Sumerians which was the first to have a symbol instead of hash marks for each number.

Around 1450 B.C. By Свифт/Svift (my work)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Have you entered the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Giveaway being hosted over at Multicultural Kid Blogs? It is part of our Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series. I will be co-hosting two posts in the next couple of weeks as part of the series and I wrote the first post for the series on Multicultural Kid Blogs. I also played a roll in getting some of the prizes for the giveaway. I thought I would take some time to review the prizes since I wanted to check some out for myself. There are three prize packs that you can win and each has a good number of books. Some of the books we have reviewed previously and others we have not. Today I am going to review four books published by Lee & Low Books that I got out of the library. I will also share information about the other prizes that I have previously reviewed or know something about. I will provide links to where prizes can be purchased for your convenience. I do not get anything from you purchasing them besides the joy of sharing wonderful resources.

The Prizes

Global Learning for Kids

Have you entered my current giveaway? This is one you do not want to miss!!

I am joining a group of Multicultural Kid Blogs to start a new series called Global Learning for Kids. Each month we will explore a country with books, music, crafts, lessons, food, etc. and share our exploration as well as have a link party so the posts will be a one-stop place to get many resources on the chosen country. This month we are starting with Japan! I wrote an introduction to the country of Japan over at Multicultural Kid Blogs to kick off Global Learning for Kids as well as the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway. (Make sure you stop by to enter the giveaway--there are some amazing prizes!!) We will be sharing posts about our exploration of Japan all month and later this month we will share two posts in the Blog Series and Giveaway (not having to do with just Japan). Make sure to follow this month!!

Since we are starting with Japan, I thought I would start with a round-up of everything we have already learned about Japan since we actually have quite a few posts with things about Japan in them.

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! Once again I am blown away by all the great ideas! This week our features consist of Earth Day & Mother's Day Features, Art Features, Toddler Features, and Other Features.

http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/books-by-country/vietnamese-childrens-favorite-stories-hardcover-with-jacket

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Hazel loves exploring the world. She loves learning about different cultures. Since her father does not like to travel or spend the money to travel, we explore from home. We try recipes from other countries, listen to music from other countries, read books about other countries and we love to read stories from other countries. Tuttle Publishing sent us V ietnamese Children's Favorite Stories retold by Phuoc Thi Minh Tran and illustrated by Nguyen Dong and Nguyen Thi Hop.

Seal Nakhon Si ThammaratBy Fine Arts Department (กรมศิลปากร) of Thailand.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Disclosure: East West Discovery Press sent me a copy of this book free of charge to review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am reviewing the first of two books for Multicultural Children's Book Day (MCCBD). What is Multicultural Children's Book Day? It is a national event which Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom created to celebrate diversity in children's books. MCCBD team hopes to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book. We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians to follow along the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media. This year's MCCBD is January 27th! More about MCCBD and the events this year later in this post. Now onto our book!!

So the other day Hazel came home from school and told me she had been arguing with some of her friends at school about whether Santa Claus is real or not. She asked who was right. In the past (maybe November) I told her Santa Clause only brings gifts to children who believe in him. She grew very concerned that one of her friends at school did not believe in him so she wouldn't get any gifts. At almost six I didn't want to ruin the magic for her, but I was not going to lie to her face. We had a discussion of how she learned about St. Nicholas in her old Waldorf School and how Santa Claus came from his stories. However since St. Nicholas is no longer alive there really is not a Santa Claus alive, so Mommy and Daddy buy the gifts from him since the spirit of Santa Claus is really part of the holiday spirit. She took this information and decided she was right--there is a Santa Claus. The next day she wanted to get her picture with Santa again at the mall when we were there (though she did tell this Santa that she already told the Santa at the other mall what she wanted for Christmas and he did not know what to say to that).

Of course I should add that the two Santas looked very different from each other. Having just written the history of Christmas trees and Christmas tree traditions around the world post, I was curious as to the Santa Clauses or Gift Bringers from around the world. I of course turned to two of my favorite sources for information, Multicultural Kid Blogs bloggers and the library!

For this week's fruit exploration we looked at persimmons. Now I will admit I only heard of persimmons a few years ago. My parents' neighbor actually grows them and gives them to my parents (or tells them to pick them when he is not at Cape Cod since he rents his house out). When we celebrated Thanksgiving, my parents brought the last couple of the season with them. The one we ate while they were here they said was among the best they ever tried.

Hazel confuses them with tomatoes however she claims to like persimmons (she does not like tomatoes). However she usually only has a few bites and then says she will eat it later and does not. There are different types of persimmons. Asian persimmons or Japanese persimmons are native to China. This is the most widely cultivated species of persimmons. They spread throughout Asia and then into Europe, California and Brazil. The fruit is edible in the firm stage but taste best when allowed to rest after harvest. They are sweet and tangy when soft. The date-plum species is native to southwest Asia and southeast Europe. It was known by the ancient Greeks as the fruit of the gods or nature's candy. Its taste is similar to a date or a plum and thus the name. The American persimmon is native to Eastern United States (and is probably the species we tried, but I am not sure). It has higher levels of vitamin C, calcium, iron, and potassium than the Japanese persimmon. It is also a food that gets the white-tailed deer through the long winter months. The black persimmon is native to Mexico. It has green skin and white flesh which turns black when ripe. The Mabolo or velvet-apple is native to the Philippines and China. It is also known as the Korean mango. The Indian persimmon is a slower growing and less flavorful species. It is known more for folk medicine. The Texas persimmon is native to Texas and Oklahoma as well as Mexico. The fruits are black on the outside unlike the Mexico persimmon which is only black on the inside.

In general persimmons are seen as two types: astringent and non-astringent. A version of the Japanese persimmon known as the Hachiya species is the most astringent type due to the high tannin levels. The tannin levels reduce as the fruit ripens. The Hachiya must be fully ripened prior to eating. Persimmons are eaten raw, cooked, or dried. When eaten fresh they can be eaten whole like an apple or cut into slices. Some varieties are more pleasant with the thin skin peeled off first. Very ripe persimmons can have the texture of pudding inside and can be eaten with a spoon once opened. Compared to apples, persimmons have higher levels of dietary fiber, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and manganese. They have lower levels of copper and zinc. They also contain vitamin C and vitamin A--beta carotene. (Source)

We did our normal exploration. Hazel used her magnifying glass to check them out and drew pictures in her journal. Then she told me what to write about them.

We also found a couple of books at the library and I found some more on Amazon.

Many of these have one of two stories in them, The Monkey and the Crab (including in Japanese Children's Favorite Stories) or The Rabbit's Tail which is also called The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon. Hazel loved reading this story since the tiger was afraid of a dried persimmon. He thought it was some sort of monster. She laughed so hard that a tiger was afraid of a dried fruit. I love how a fruit exploration turns into a cultural exploration as well.

For more fruit explorations check out:

Pears
Pumpkins
Apples
Cherries
Watermelon
Lime
Lemon
Pineapple
Raspberry
Blueberry
Strawberry
My Fruit Pinterest Board For even more fruit ideas!

Announcement: Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party (and Giveaways)

How do you join the Twitter party? Just use hashtag #ReadYourWorld to find us. When you tweet, use the hashtag so everyone can find you!

Register below to be able to win!!

Exploring Singapore with Books, Food & Maps -- Global Learning for Kids

Malaysian and Singapore Children's Favourite Stories -- Asian Pacific-American Heritage Month Review & Giveaway

Katie Chin's Everyday Chinese Cookbook -- Asian Pacific Heritage Month Series

Isabella of Castile and our Exploration of Spain -- Global Learning for Kids

The Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses from Goosebottom Books -- Women's History Month

The Year of the Monkey -- Exploring Chinese New Year with books & Chinese New Year Link Party

Exploring Diwali with Books, Game & Craft -- Free Templates

Exploring India -- Resources and Craft

Math of India -- Global Learning for Kids

Asian Book Reviews -- Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway

The History of Zero--Asian Pacific American Heritage Blog Series and Giveaway Post

History of Zero:

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Prize Review

The Prizes

Global Learning for Kids

Sharing Saturday 15-16

Vietnamese Children's Favorite Stories Book Review

Chinese Zodiac and Chinese New Year Book Reviews

Seal Nakhon Si ThammaratBy Fine Arts Department (กรมศิลปากร) of Thailand.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Endeavour's Long Journey Book Review for Multicultural Children's Book Day

Gift Bringers Around the World

Friday Fruit Exploration -- Persimmon

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