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Diversity Children’s Books Website is Live
Mixed Diversity Children’s Book Reviews is officially a website: http://mixeddiversityreads.com/.
The Website, which founder Omilaju Miranda began as a page on facebook is now a full website with blog where you can find books with diverse protagonists by specific category. Books are easily locatable on a drop down menu. The site is dedicated to listing and reviewing children’s and YA books with protagonists who are either: biracial/mixed, transracial adoptee, bilingual, lgbt-parented, single-parented, or gender non-conforming. There is also a magazine where the site will feature writing for, and by children, and an opportunity for parents to send in photos and videos of their children reading or reciting stories and poems. Check out the book site and find the book for your little one today. If you are a writer or interested in communications and publicity, the site is actively seeking children’s book reviewers and interns to publicize and network with schools and libraries.
All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka
Poetically, the children of this book become the natural bounty of the earth, their skin color and hair textures compared to the beautiful colors of nature and hair compared to the textures of other living creatures.
With typical sentences/stanzas like,
“Children come in all the colors of the earth—
The roaring browns of bears and soaring eagles,
The whispering golds of late summer grasses,
And crackling russets of fallen leaves,”
a child is able to glean a confidence-inspiring insight into their physical look. This is a beautifully illustrated book that lives up to the lyrical poetry of its narrative. The illustrations go far beyond the normal representation of the human rainbow and, with very detailed rendering of facial characteristics, skin complexions and hair textures, the reader sees real differences in many, many different ethnic types. On the pages of this book, children of every ethnic heritage will find reflections of themselves enjoying life and the world around them. While every physical type of child is represented in ‘All the Colors of the Earth,’ only interracial families are represented, which I think is an exceptional and novel choice however disappointingly inconsistent with the universal inclusiveness of the other illustrations.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; Ages 3+
Book Review by Omilaju Miranda.
In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco
This is one of the best first person narrative children’s books I’ve ever read. The voice is so authentic I thought it was a children’s nonfiction story until I read the back bookflap. An African descendant woman tells the story of her life with her two mothers, Asian brother and carrot-top sister from their at-birth adoptions until their parents pass away, leaving the family home to the protagonist’s brother. Polacco’s narrative style is one of such candor and fluidity that as the protagonist shares with us the milestones of her life from becoming a big sister to seeing her mothers in dresses for the first time to finding emotional comfort in the home after her parents pass away , the reader is increasingly emotionally invested in their ever expanding world of friends, family and tradition. Polacco also includes the conflict of an anti-gay neighbor in the book, who turns the dial up on that confrontational anti-gay anger pretty high without actually saying “lesbian, gay, or homosexual.” The mothers handle the confrontation in a protective and reassuring manner that gives parents reading this book with children the freedom to explain as little or as much about sexual orientation as parents wish, including saying nothing about sexual orientation and just explaining that sometimes people don’t like others who are different. Illustrated with engaging animation and expressiveness, readers will see and feel a full spate of emotions as we do in real life. While the mothers demonstrate friendly touch affection towards each other and familial touch affection toward the children, for some, it will be important to see that the three children enter heterosexual marriages, framed in family portraits near the end of the book. The choice to show the oldest daughter and the son married to people within their “own” racial groups, demonstrates to me a silent acknowledgement of efforts made by the Italian and English-Irish mothers to encourage, support and preserve their children’s unique cultural identities. Complete with three children who grow up to become successful professionals with happy families of their own, In Our Mothers’ House is the multi-dimensional All American LGBT-parent family story.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; ages 6+
Reviewer: Omilaju Miranda
Kimchi and Calamari
Joseph Calderaro turns fourteen at the beginning of this engaging, humorous story of a Korean born Italian American kid who is thrown into a quagmire of emotions when, on the heels of his social studies teacher giving him ancestry project that makes him feel that he has no history or ancestral connections because he is adopted, his father gives him a corno for his birthday, as is the Italian cultural tradition in their family
While the major plot of the novel is Joseph’s search for his Korean mother and family, he also has a crush on a girl and teenage awkwardness to overcome. In this story that offers no dreamy endings, Rose Kent writes such a convincing and vulnerable narrative through Joseph’s first person voice that readers will laugh and cry growing close to Joseph and the people in his close circle. Readers will feel agitated with Joseph’s whining, tattle-tale younger twin sisters—the biological daughters of his parents, laugh with Joseph’s best friend who pushes him to do the search for his birth mother and hold their breath in empathy with his father whose fear of rejection and discomfort with the issue of Joseph being of Korean ancestry keeps him from even talking about Joseph’s birth nationality. Kent seamlessly weaves into the story the many ways in which Joseph feels inadequate as a Korean and rootless as an Italian. In addition to the disappointment of finding the “wrong” birth family, he also meets a Korean immigrant family who stereotypically own the Dry Cleaners and have a daughter who is an academic prodigy whose Korean language and cultural traditions exacerbate Joseph’s sense of being “un-Korean”.
At the center of the novel is the drastic and desperate action Joseph takes to hide the fact that he doesn’t know his Korean ancestry and the drama that unfolds and upturns Joseph’s life in the wake of his tortured decision. Ultimately, Joseph’s father breaks his silence, Joseph works to repair the relationships he has broken and his family strategizes an approach to integrating Joseph’s Korean roots into his Italian-American/Korean life. Anyone who likes to read will read ‘Kimchi and Calamari’ twice and love it. Others will read this book and find a powerful story of defining identity, being lost and found as a transracially, internationally adopted child.
Recommendation: Highest Recommendation; ages 9-14
Reviewer: Omilaju Miranda
A Wild Cowboy by Dana Kessimalis Smith
From the opening line of this book, “I am a boy, a wild cowboy,” the reader enters the imaginary world of a city boy who sees his entire world as the ranch that he runs. His parents (Asian Mom/ black dad) take him and his brother to his grandmother’s house. His brother is the protagonist’s “pardner”, his grandmother’s brownstone and it’s small backyard become the ranch; the pets and stuffed animals become the cattle that the grandmother and grandsons must “drive.” They are the “frontier’s best” smack dab in the middle of the city; his mom is a horse, his grandma’s puppies are coyotes and the reader is along for a fun adventure of the mind. You and your child will love the world created in the protagonists mind, the exciting pace of which is set with rhythmical rhyme. I smiled all the way through.
What A Family! By Rachel Isadora
From hair to toes, cousins share similar features even when those cousins appear to be of different racial heritages. In this book, lively illustrations and funny descriptions of common and rarely thought of characteristics are an alternative way to read a family tree. The book shows several generations of the family highlighting the physical links across generations of cousins.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; Ages 2-10
Reviewer: Omilaju Miranda
Buzz by Janet S. Wong
A preschool boy with a white father and Asian mother is the first person narrator of this story of his family’s morning rituals. He adorably mimics his father’s shaving and getting dressed and “helps” his mom make morning drinks. I like the way the author and illustrator integrate the natural environment into the text via the view through the open windows and the narrative language. Starting with the opening line describing a bee feeding from a flower, the lawn mower on the front lawn, and closing with the boy sniffing a flower, nature is the quiet secondary character in this story. Other fun and sensory stimulating aspects of the story are all the sounds of the morning. Like a child’s attention span, when the protagonist sits down to breakfast, his focus switches from his parents to playing with his airplane. This play is full of sounds and characteristically pre-school age clumsiness which ends in an accident that mom must clean up. Preschoolers will identify with that moment of being pulled out of their imagination into the real world by a spill they caused and still being kissed by mom despite the mistake. The illustrator, Margaret Chodos-Irvine, makes great use of the page, a number of times choosing to paint several scenes on one page. Although this story feels short, it is a fun and sensory stimulating read.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; Ages 0-7
Reviewer: Omilaju Miranda
Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck
From featuring Russian/Korean children who love soccer to Black/Indian children who like talking and drawing with their younger brothers, Kip Fulbeck’s highly acclaimed photo essay, which has traveled life sized as an art exhibition around the country presents photos of Mixed Kids with a description of their racial/ethnic backgrounds and a short essay from the parents or the child on their lives. Despite the photo of the child of multiracial African descent on the front cover, the book has more photos of children of multiracial Asian Descent (Hapa) than any other ethnicities. One of the most comprehensive sources celebrating mixed kids this reviewer has ever seen, a child with racial/ethnic heritages from all parts of the world will find several or more children with whom to physically identify, as well as get to know beyond the surface level, when reading this book.
Recommendation:Highly Recommended for all; Ages 0-Adult
Book Review by: Omilaju Miranda
Book Review for We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo by Linda Walvoord Girard
This is a first person narrative from the perspective of the adopted child, Benjamin Koo Andrews. In it he tells his life history from birth to his current age—nine-years-old. His story discusses everything from being left at the doorstep of an orphanage when he was approximately 10 days old through his toddler years, early childhood, discovery of his racial difference from his parents and rebelling because he was adopted, adopting his sister and dealing with taunts at school. The book feels like a documentary but it is very informative and acknowledges a wide range of life experiences and feelings that a child who doesn’t share the race or country of his parents may face. The illustrations make the heaviness of the narrative approach a little lighter and this definitely is a book that I feel is a powerful tool for a parent to use to discuss adoption with their child; the text feels like it was written for that purpose moreso than anything.
Recommendation: Recomended; Age 6+
Book Reviewer: Omilaju Miranda
Diverse Kids Books--Reviews 