Picture Books About Diverse Cultures
Every month, Montessori For All selects an anti-bias, anti-racist book for our teachers to read to their communities. First we select one for 3-6 year-olds, then one for 1st-3rd graders, and finally one for 4th-6th graders. Therefore, if you would like to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive links to book guides with discussion questions, vocabulary words, and extension activities to be used in the classroom or at home, you can sign up here. This month we are focusing on race and racism. Further, you can find books about peace/justice/empathy here or immigration and refugees here.
Picture Books about Diverse Cultures: 3-6 year-olds
This Is The Way We Go To School: A Book About Children Around the World
By Edith Baer
The book takes readers on a journey around the world, celebrating the many different ways children travel to school. Includes themes of transportation, school, culture, and childhood. A world map is included at the end of book indicating where all the children in the story live.
Picture Books about Diverse Cultures: 6-9 Year-Olds
By Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw
Elliot lives in America, and Kailash lives in India. They are pen pals. By exchanging letters and pictures, they learn that they both love to climb trees, have pets, and go to school. Their worlds might look different, but they are actually similar. Same, same. But different!
Through an inviting point-of-view and colorful, vivid illustrations, this story shows how two boys living oceans apart can be the best of friends.
Picture Books about Diverse Cultures: 9-12 year-olds (Could Also Work for 6-9 year-olds)
A Life Like Mine: How Children Live Around the World
After ten years of study and consultation, UNICEF, the premier organization devoted to the care and welfare of the world’s children, published the results of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Using these tenets as a base, A Life Like Mine profiles children from all over the globe leading their lives in different and fascinating ways. The challenges of nations both developed and developing are revealed in the stories and photographs in this special volume. DK and UNICEF have combined their inspirational forces to provide remarkable insight into children’s lives.