Happy Mother’s Day! Did you enjoy celebrating Día ? Don’t forget to share any pictures that you might have taken. I hope that you had a wonderful time observing Día at your library with local families and friends. Now that April 30th has come and gone, don’t think your opportunity to incorporate diversity into your programming and collection has passed! Día celebrates children and books while also encouraging families and children to connect with multicultural books, cultures and languages. To honor the special ladies we all treasure today, I’ve put together some of my favorite books about mothers that can expose children to different cultures and languages.
Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara Joosse (Chronicle Books, 1998) is a great choice for a multicultural Mother’s Day read. This story tells of an Inuit mother and daughter and is set in the majestic wilderness of Alaska. The child seeks to find out whether her mother will love her no matter what she does. Children will learn about the native creatures of Alaska as the child imagines herself as a polar bear and musk ox. Preschoolers will be delighted with Lavallee’s artwork depicting mother and daughter clad in Inuit garb. A Canadian historian even assisted in checking the manuscript to assure that the Inuit culture was portrayed accurately in this book.
Kindergarteners will enjoy My Mom is a Foreigner, But Not to Me by Julianne Moore (Chronicle Books, 2013). This is a lovely picture book that explores the feelings some children may have when they have a parent from another country. Children can learn how to say, “I love you, Mom!” in a variety of languages such as German and French. So’s beautiful illustrations exhibit various ethnic clothing and foods.
For the remarkable grandmothers in your life, read All About Grandmas by Roni Schotter (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012). This charming book looks at grandmas of all shapes, sizes and colors! Children can learn how to say “grandma” in 50 languages thanks to a convenient list in the front of the book. Grandchildren will love reading this with their Lola (Philippine dialect) , Farmor (Swedish) or Oma (German).
My final selection for Mother’s Day, A Tale of Two Mommies by Vanita Oelschlager (Vanita Books, 2011), follows a young boy at the beach as he discusses his two mothers with his friends. This is a fun choice for any same-sex couples who may have children with questions about their non-traditional family dynamic, as it shows that they are really not that different from other families at all.
What are some of your favorite titles to share on Mother’s Day?
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Nicole Lee Martin is a Children’s Librarian at the Grafton-Midview Public Library in Grafton, OH and is writing this post for the Public Awareness Committee. You can reach her at nicolemartin@oplin.org.
Anna McQuinn
Lovely recommendations. Don’t forget Lola at the Library where Lola’s book-loving mommy takes her to the library and reads to her in bed.
Renee Perron
A favorite at our home and a perfect book for a laptime story time is On Mother’s Lap by Ann Herbert Scott. An Eskimo boy sits on his mother’s lap and rocks “back and forth, back and forth.” He keeps adding toys to come join him on his mother’s lap but when his mother says that his crying baby sibling should join them, the boy complains that there isn’t enough room. But as mom fits everyone and every toy on her lap, she concludes that there is always enough room on mother’s lap.