Reading Culturally Diverse Literature and Multimodal Texts
For our readings this week, we had the opportunity to read/listen to two amazing texts that focus on racial injustice, divorce, bullying, and beautiful new friendships. In the text, The Parker Inheritance, I was glued to every page as I watched the main characters grow and learn about their community and past. While listening to the text, Something Happened in our Town, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with the perspectives from two different families about how they want to fight against discrimination and ways to take action against it.
​
Learning Outcomes:
-
Evaluate the quality of culturally diverse children’s literature across culturally specific children’s book awards and the book’s visual and verbal sensitivity, authenticity and accuracy, and ideology.
-
Develop a teaching invitation for a children’s book and a multimodal text that will become part of a text set that centers anti-racist children’s books; determine how the text is intertextually connected to the larger text set
The Parker Inheritance
​
Written by:
Varian Johnson
Something Happened in our Town
​
Written by:
Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, & Ann Hazzard
What are these texts about?
The Parker Inheritance is a chapter book that will literally make you not want to put the book down once you open it. Once I started reading, I got so lost in the text I lost track of time multiple times. In this Coretta Scott King Award honor book, Johnson not only discusses history from a small town in South Carolina, but also major issues that kids face and go through daily. This book is about crushing racism, overcoming bullying, divorce, and true friendships.
In this chapter book, a young girl and her mom move into her deceased grandmother's house in Lambert, South Carolina after her mother and father divorce. Candice soon befriends her neighbor, Brandon, and they are soon inseparable. Both of these characters are book-loving, mystery solving fans who are about to have a very adventurous Summer. One day, Candice finds a letter that was addressed to her grandmother about a hidden treasure and clues about how to find it and how to uncover racial acts that took place many years earlier. These two characters learn much history about their small town, history of known families, and even help each other discover who they are.
​
In a short video that Varian Johnson shares discussing the text, he talks about how this novel is based off his hometown, Florence, South Carolina. Florence is very similar to Lambert in many ways. Johnson discusses that both places are homes to many strong African Americans. This text is very culturally authentic in many ways. One being that he writes many times in the novel about the history and racial injustice that has occurred in the past as well as racial slur.
Something Happened in our Town is an incredible book that really makes the reader experience empathy along with the characters. In this text, there is a shooting of an African American male by a police officer and families are fighting against discrimination. The families talk about how it was a "mistake" and that the policeman thought the man had a gun. We go through this text with the perspectives of two families and how they want to stop certain behaviors and fight against discrimination.
While reading the article, CULTUR ALLY DIVERSE LITERATURE Enriching Variety in an Era of Common Core State Standards, they discuss and provide many resources when it comes to making sure ALL teachers incorporate culturally diverse literature in their teaching. Below I have provided different authors and illustrators of culturally diverse books as well as resources to locate different culturally diverse texts provided from the article.
Meet the Authors!
Learn more about Marianne Cilano, Marietta Collins, & Ann Hazzard here!
