Chad Stephenson, San Francisco Friends School librarian, has been working on an extensive school project about Diwali, the Hindu winter Festival of Light, celebrated on November 9 this year. In a ‘Personal View’ piece he’s contributed to the PaperTigers website, Chad gives us the scoop on the celebration of Rama’s victorious return from Lanka with his kidnapped wife, Sita. His article is chock full of great Diwali-related reading recommendations, including Hanuman, by Erik Jendresen and Joshua M. Greene, illustrated by Li Ming, and, for background and context, Uma Krishnaswami’s award-winning Monsoon, illustrated by Jamel Akib. Here’s a PaperTigers review of another book on Chad’s list.

Canadian Rachna Gilmore‘s Lights for Gita isn’t on his list, but it will shed yet more light on the Diwali’s real meaning: Gita’s difficulties settling into her life in Canada are exemplified by not being able to celebrate the holiday the same way she would have back home.

I read with interest the Here in the Bonny Glen’s post on Noel Perrin’s book A Child’s Delight about bringing back nearly-forgotten classics into a child’s reading library. The Common Room gives a slightly longer list of some of the books covered, as well as more background as to how the book came to be. Both blogs talk with great enthusiasm about books I have never heard of and now feel I must investigate for myself as much as for my children. We have made inroads into Hugh Lofting, Margery Sharp and E. Nesbit over the last couple of years – and we mean to read Mary Norton’s The Borrowers before we go and see a stage adaptation of it in January – but there are many others there to add to the “to read” list.

Revisiting favorites from my own childhood is one of the things I love about reading with my children and by reading them together, I get to share in their enthusiasm for them too – hence Dr Dolittle and others, like The Secret Garden - but there are also books that I wish I’d read and somehow never got round to – thus we have all followed the adventures of Five Children and It and its sequel The Phoenix and the Carpet in the same state of unknowing.

At present, we are reading Russel Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child, (more…)

The Pacific Rim Down Under is home to a vibrant community of children’s book enthusiasts, authors and illustrators. Unpacking first at the PaperTigers website, here’s a list of reading lists, with links of course, on Oz. Then peruse this annotated list of non-fiction books and book series about Oz for children, with links to other lists of Australia-related picture books, animal books, and fantasy books. The Children’s Book Council of Australia has links to award-winning children’s books by and about Australians. The University of Canberra’s Lu Rees archives of children’s literature has great resources as well. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators of Australia links to members’ sites.

Now that we’ve done the flyover, we’ll be zooming in periodically for close-up snapshots of Oz for Kids; stay tuned.

As the genre of books on multicultural adoption grows in popularity, lists of such books, with sub-genres, are also proliferating. The Comeunity site offers book lists for kids and adults, along with other resources for adopting families. The AdoptShoppe site offers books specifically for kids from China, Korea, and Russia. Adopt Korea has a list for Korean adoptees. Adopt Vietnam has lists for fiction and non-fiction. Here’s another resource for kids’ multicultural adoption books and one of multiracial adoption books from PACT. Adoption counselor and author Betty J. Lifton writes on the subject, for children and for adults.d

At PaperTigers, check here for an interview with Xinran, author of Motherbridge of Love (MBL) , whose U.K. based charity has the goal of “reaching out to Chinese children in all corners of the world: those who have been raised abroad, those who have been adopted by Western families, and those living in China, often in destitute conditions”. And here for Rose Kent‘s article, “Three Cheers for Adoption Books and Why We Should All Read ‘Em.”