Exciting news from The Global Fund for Children (GFC):

We are pleased to announce the release of our new picture puzzle book, I Am Different, by Manjula Padmanabhan, for children aged 3 to 8. Each colorfully illustrated page contains one key difference to discover—an item that’s a different color, a different shape, reversed from left to right, or just asleep when others are awake.

Paired with each picture puzzle is the question “Can you find me?” in one of 16 languages. Children will have fun trying out Hebrew, Arabic, French, Swahili, and American Sign Language. And they may find that “different” is just as nice as “same.”

Kirkus Reviews calls I Am Different “a tour de force. … A substantive, engaging title for multilingual education.”

A portion of the proceeds from the sales of I Am Different and all Global Fund for Children books supports innovative community-based organizations that serve children and youth worldwide.

We have also recently released a new guide to high-quality websites and books that foster diversity learning in children. The guide, Kids Becoming Global Citizens: Resources for Parents and Educators, includes 250 summary annotations of children’s books; over 100 online resources, including lesson plans and activities, interactive games, and multimedia resources; and recommended books for parents and educators. Topics range from diversity in the United States to environmental stewardship, and from global citizenship to religious diversity.

The guide is free and available to the public at http://bookstore.globalfundforchildren.org/index.php/resourceguide. All books and resources were chosen for their overall quality and content and for their positive portrayal of different cultures.

“This guide can help  teach children about a wide range of topics related to diversity and global citizenship,” said Cynthia Pon, director of Global Fund for Children Books. “After scouring the Internet and exploring what the literary community has to offer in terms of diversity education, we hope this guide will provide hours of enjoyment, enrich lesson plans, and encourage thoughtful conversations.”

The guide is authored by Pon and Kelly Swanson Turner, with assistance from Laurel Fiorelli.

To learn more about The Global Fund for Children (GFC) be sure to read PaperTigers’  interview with Maya Ajmera, founder and president of GFC.

Observed by Muslims all over the world, the Islamic holy month of prayer and fasting, known as Ramadan, started this year on August 11th in North America and will culminate on Eid, a three day celebration that marks the end of the period of fasting.

Here are some children’s books about Ramadan that have been featured on PaperTigers:

A Party in Ramadan, by Asma Mobin-Uddin, illustrated by Laura Jacobsen (Boyds Mills Press)

Leena, a young girl who is fasting “part time” for the first time (children are not expected to fast every day of Ramadan until they have passed puberty), is disappointed when she finds out that her best friend’s party will be held on the afternoon of the day she had chosen to fast. How she deals with her conflicted feelings makes for a very gentle story about faith and friendship. This is “a picture book that can help bridge divides and reassure children of any faith who sometimes have to make the choice between fitting in and following their hearts.”

Many Windows: Six Kids, Five Faiths, One Community, by Rukhsana Khan, with Uma Krishnaswami and Elisa Carbone (Napoleon & Company)

Many Windows is a book of stories about six children of different faiths sharing one community. In the story about Ramadan, a young boy is suspicious of his uncle, who is visiting from Pakistan to celebrate it with his family. The book includes an information section on the religious celebrations and, through its interlinked stories, “shows a community whose members respect and value one another—a gentle and crucial message our youth would benefit from finding in other contemporary stories.”

Moon Watchers: Shirin’s Ramadan Miracle, written by Reza Jalali and illustrated by Anne Sibley O’Brien, recently published by Tilbury House, is the story of a nine year-old girl who is too young to fast like her older brother and how she comes to understand that there’s more to Ramadan than just fasting. We will be reviewing the book ourselves soon, but in the meantime, here’s a lovely review from ForeWord magazine.

For more books for children and teens about Ramadan, I suggest you head over to UmmahReads, where you will find great reading lists divided by age group.

We are delighted to welcome Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeSaix, joint authors and illustrators of The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust (Holiday House, 2009), talking about the background to the book – and posing some thought-provoking questions. And we offer our congratulations too: The Grand Mosque of Paris has been included on the recently announced ALA 2010 Notable Books for Children (Middle Reader) and the 2010 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children Recommended Books lists. I have read and re-read this wonderful book and cannot recommend it highly enough – and it is such a plus to have history presented in such a beautifully illustrated picture-book format. You can read more about Karen and Deborah’s work on their website, particularly about another of their co-authored books, Hidden on the Mountain: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon.

But enough from me – over to Karen and Deborah:

Wartime heroics in Paris. Persecuted Jews and prisoners-of-war fleeing the Nazis through the utterly dark, twisting tunnels of the labyrinth beneath the city and escaping hidden among giant wine casks on barges heading south. A clandestine Resistance group using a rare language — Kabyle — as code. Rescuers and the rescued slipping secretly in and out of one of the most beautiful buildings in Paris — the Grand Mosque — and finding refuge among its lush gardens and apartments, or even in the sanctuary. Who wouldn’t be seduced by a story like this one? But the one thing that drew us into this little-known piece of World War II history was the fact that Muslims were risking their own lives to save the lives of Jews.

“Save one life, and it is as if you’ve saved all of humanity.” It is striking and ironic that these words are found in each of these two religions that all too often seem to be bitterly divided. The current conflict between Muslims and Jews has been going on for so long, sometimes it feels as though it’s been that way forever.

But as we researched our book, The Grand Mosque of Paris: The Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust, we learned that North African Muslims and Jews had referred to each other as brothers for centuries and lived side by side in peace. One of our goals with this book was to remind people that Judaism and Islam were once in harmony. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could be that way again? Seems almost impossible to imagine, doesn’t it?

And if it’s hard for us, how difficult must it be for kids, who have only experienced the intense hostility trumpeted in the news every day? But we believe that children may be our best hope.

Martine Bernheim believes this, too. She is Vice-President at a French organization that works to eradicate racism and anti-semitism (LICRA). In schools all across Europe, she has shown Derri Berkani’s wonderful documentary film, Une Résistance Oubliée: La Mosquée, about the WWII rescue of Jews at the mosque. She is struck by the shift in attitude she sees in the kids who have seen this film: racist violence decreases tremendously, as compassion increases.

Wouldn’t it be great if our book had a similar effect?

Two of the books I gave my 8-year-old daughter for Christmas were Douglas Wood‘s Old Turtle (illus. by Cheng Khee-Chee) and Old Turtle and the Broken Truth (illus. by Jon J Muth). I had heard much about these modern-day classics over the years and was looking forward to sharing them with her. I read the books once, before wrapping and putting them under our Christmas tree, but it wasn’t until we read them together, snuggled up in bed, that I realized how truly special they were. Their plea for unity, acceptance and understanding between people and nature got two thumbs up from my daughter.

In Old Turtle, when all creation starts arguing over who or what God is, Old Turtle, their wise and ancient leader, is the only one who accepts and incorporates the beliefs of all the creatures: “‘God is indeed deep,’ she says to the fish in the sea, ‘and much higher than high,’ she tells the mountains.” In Old Turtle and the Broken Truth (Muth’s image of the Truth falling from the sky and breaking in half being an especially poignant one), it’s up to a young, determined girl to help humans see that the truth they are fighting over is broken, and that there is not just one truth, but “truths all around us, and within us.”

The very important ideas these books convey add dimension to our website’s current focus on Respect for Religious Diversity, and the following quote from Old Turtle and the Broken Truth perfectly captures its essence:

Remember this, Little One… The Broken Truth, and life itself, will be mended only when one person meets another—someone from a different place or with a different face or different ways—and sees and hears herself. Only then will the people know that every person, every being, is important, and that the world was made for each of us.

Amelia Lau Carling’s picture-book, Mama and Papa Have a Store (Dial, 1998)/ La Tienda de Mamá y Papá (Groundwood, 2003)) is all about a day in her parents’ Chinese shop in Guatemala City. In a wonderfully evocative Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, Amelia shares some more memories from her childhood, as she recalls the celebrations “On Our Street” around this time of year:

We sat in the rooftop terrace around a small card table. We were the three kids my mother could rope into a chore that would pay us a quarter each. My feet dangled without touching the floor. Mama had cooked a pot of glue with cornstarch, water and lemon juice. The pot sat cooling in the middle of the table and a couple of old paintbrushes lay next to it. There was a stack of “Cohete El Aguila” labels and a case of firecrackers, each one a four-inch square of red paper and gunpowder. Our job was to glue a label on each packet. In the sky, a kite or two danced among the clouds. The air was crisp and the sun shone strongly. We whiled away the afternoon around the little table in silly banter, slapping on labels.

It was December in Guatemala, and we were happy to be in the middle of our summer vacation. School was out from October to January. Christmas and New Year’s Eve were coming, and pasting firecracker labels was only part of the excitement. We helped in the store, our Chinese store where a little of everything was sold. I stood on a stool to punch the numbers in quetzales and centavos on the old cash register and turned the crank on the side to make its drawer fly open with a cheerful brrring…”

Read the rest of Amelia’s article here - and while you’re at it, check out our gallery feature and interview with her…

Continuing our exploration of respect in relation to end-of-year celebrations and inspired by Marjorie’s beautiful post on The Christmas Menorahs, today I highlight Maya Angelou‘s Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem (Schwartz & Wade, 2008).

Although written in a Christmas spirit, the poem’s resonance is far more broad, as it encourages one and all to “Come away from rancor. Come the way of friendship.” A sound piece of advice to humanity in this day and age when wars and conflicts still happen in the name of religion.

As seen in the excerpted verses below, her poem is a call for peace and unity:

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

These words go straight into the heart, don’t they?

Do you know of other books for children that speak of people from different faiths coming together during the holidays? Would you recommend them? Please do share so we can all learn about how others have “come the way of friendship.”

It’s Sunday night and as I type this post my husband and children are putting the final decorating touches on our Christmas tree.  So, as I sit  here thinking about what event to blog about this week, perhaps  Family Trees: A Celebration of Children’s Literature would be most appropriate.

Held from December 4, 2009  through to January 3, 2010 in Concord, MA, USA, the annual Family Trees event is unique among the many holiday events in Greater Boston as it focuses on  children’s literature! The historic Concord Museum galleries are filled with fanciful trees of all shapes and sizes decorated with original ornaments inspired by acclaimed children’s storybooks and contemporary picture book favorites.  Each tree serves as a canvas for the artistic creations of a dedicated team of volunteer decorators. Inspired by the storyline, the illustrations, the characters or setting of a particular book, the decorators let their imaginations take flight, much to the delight of visitors of all ages from all over New England.

Serving as inspiration for this year’s trees are books that are classics and sure-to-become classics. Selections include:

Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth

Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah by Linda Glaser, illustrated by Nancy Cote

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem by Maya Angelou, illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher

Fortune Cookie Fortunes, by Grace Lin

Flotsam by David Wiesner

For a complete list of this year’s  books (there are over 30 titles!)  click here.

Proceeds from Family Trees benefit the Concord Museum’s educational mission serving an audience of preschoolers, school-age children, college students, families, adults and seniors in over 600 school and public programs yearly.  For hours of operation, admission costs etc. click here.

And since we are speaking of the holidays, be sure to check our new website features, which focus on Religious Diversity in relation to End-of-Year Celebrations.

The new issue of PaperTigers, focusing on Religious Diversity in relation to End-of-Year Celebrations, is now live.

The end of the year, when so many holy and secular days are observed and celebrated, reminds us of the importance of understanding and being respectful of how others in our communities engage with and
express their beliefs. Books play an essential role in helping children learn about differences (for instance, why some people celebrate different holidays, or the same holidays in different ways, while others don’t celebrate anything): but more than anything, books can help them realize that, while our individualities do matter, our common humanity matters even more.

We hope you will enjoy our new features, which focus on celebrating diversity while striving for a more encompassing and tolerant world for all our children, families and communities.

We will also be talking about religious diversity and end-of-year celebrations here on the blog this month, so we hope you will share your favorite books and experiences with us!