Josephine: A Multicultural Children's Book Day Review

January 27th is Multicultural Children's Book Day: Celebrating Diversity in Children's Literature and our family is very honored to have been chosen as one of the book reviewers for this wonderful (and much needed) event! According to recent statistics only 10% of children's books published are diverse in nature. This is despite the fact that according to recent census data 37% of the US population consists of people of color. With that in mind Multicultural Children's Book Day: Celebrating Diversity in Children's Literature was born! Many thanks to Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom and Valerie Badayr from JumpIntoABook for putting this event together, and to Wisdom Tales Press, Lee and Low Books, Chronicle Books and Susan Daniel Fayad for serving as sponsors. As they say, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world!

We were sent Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker to review. Before we began reading I showed the girls the trailer for the book (which they loved).  It is a gorgeous (albeit long) book. With 104 pages this is not a book that you should read all in one sitting (we did, and if we could go back in time and change that we would). It spans Josephine's entire life and could (and should) be read one section at a time. We loved learning about her travels and being able to look up video footage of her on YouTube as we read about different performances that she did. We were fascinated that not only was she a dancer but she was also a spy, learned to fly planes, performed for the troops and was awarded France's highest honor (the Legion d'Honneur). The girls loved that she adopted twelve children from all different countries and made sure that they remained connected to their home cultures and home religions. She and her "rainbow tribe" (as she called them) were truly helping to break barriers! 

I also discovered that Chronicle Books had a couple of activities to go along with this book. 

I knew that the girls would love to make their own banana bracelets in honor of Josephine's famous banana dance!

They decided to cut each banana out to make it more like her skirt. Brilliant idea, girls!

Grace modeling her banana bracelet and her favorite part of the story. 

The girls absolutely loved this drawing activity and came up with some great ideas!

Grace thought Josephine might have liked to walk a peacock!

My only criticism of this book is that in the beginning it mentions rape. To say that I was *very* surprised to see that a children's book would contain such a word is an understatement, especially given that it's target audience is seven to ten year olds. After the shock of seeing this word in this book wore off I chose to skip reading that particular word aloud rather than get in a discussion with my seven-and-a-half year old and my (almost) six year old about what rape is. There will come a time when we discuss that topic but in my opinion these tender ages are not the time. 

Thank you Mia and Valerie for choosing our family to serve as book reviewers for this very important day! We hope that you'll keep us in mind for future book events too!

*Full Disclosure: Chronicle Books provided a copy of Josephine to review. All opinions expressed are my own. *