Multicultural Children's Book Day Event - Celebrating Diversity in Children's Literature

    MARYVILLE, TN, January 20, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Children's reading and play advocates Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom have teamed up to create an ambitious (and much needed) national event. On January 27th, 2015 Jump into a Book and Pragmatic Mom will be presenting Multicultural Children's Book Day as a way to draw attention and raise awareness about diversity in children's literature.

In it's second year, Multicultural Children's Book day has more than doubled with over 150 bloggers reviewing books from publishers and authors.

Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children's books published have diversity content.

Using Multicultural Children's Book Day, Wenjen and Budayr, along with nine co-hosts Africa to America, All Done Monkey, Educators Spin on it, Growing Book By Book, Incultural Parent, Kid World Citizen, Mama Smiles, Multicultural Kid Blogs, Sprout's Bookshelf and 17 event sponsors Platinum Sponsors: Wisdom Tales Press,Daybreak Press Global Bookshop, Gold Sponsors: Satya House, MulticulturalKids.com, Author Stephen Hodges and the Magic Poof, Silver Sponsors: Junior Library Guild, Capstone Publishing, Lee and Low Books, The Omnibus Publishing. Bronze Sponsors:Double Dutch Dolls, Bliss Group Books, Snuggle with Picture Books Publishing, Rainbow Books, Author FeliciaCapers, Chronicle Books Muslim Writers Publishing Press are on a mission to change all of that.

This year Multicultural Children's Book Day is partnering with First Book offering a Virtual Book Drive that will help donate multicultural children's books through their channels during the week of January 27th 2015.

This year as well Multicultural Children's Book Day is collaborating with the Children's Book Council to highlight wonderful diversity books and authors. Currently 25 multicultural/diverse author, illustrators are being highlighted on the Multicultural Children' Book Day website over the course of January.

On January 27th 2015, along with the blog tour there will be a Twitter Party hosting big book package giveaways from our sponsors and authors as well as other book donations given by several publishers. The Twitter Party is 9pm to 10pm EST using hashtag #ReadYourWorld.

For media interviews please contact project manager Rebecca Flansburg at [email protected].
http://www.jumpintoabook.com/multicultural-childrens-book-day/

Multicultural Children's Book Day includes book reviews from noted bloggers all over the world, giveaways and book-related activities for young readers of all ages. The MCCBD team will also be partnering with First Book to create a Virtual Book Drive for the event, and with The Children's Book Council to offer readers quality resources along with fun and informative author visits.

Together the 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, multicultural children's book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.

**Multicultural Children's Book Day is proud to announce that it is now a 5013C non-profit!

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