Notes From the Reading Nook: August 3
August?! August.
What we’re reading
Super Manny Stands Up! by Kelly DiPucchio
Summer’s Vacation by Lynn Plourde
The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson
All the Colors We Are/Todos los colores de nuestra piel: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color/La historia de por qué tenemos diferentes colores de piel by Katie Kissinger (highly recommended)
Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry G. Allard Jr. (this book is just as funny as it was when I was a kid)
Links of possible interest
A few weeks ago I came across an outstanding and remarkable passion project from a veteran Charlotte Mason homeschool mother called Stories of Color.
Anyone who has spent five minutes in the CM world (hell, the homeschooling world in general) knows that one of the biggest issues — possibly the biggest issue — is the lack of inclusive living books used by 99.9% of the available CM curricula. Mason was a creature of her time and so I can forgive her for her booklists but I can’t get past all the present-day home educators creating (and teaching) curricula that stay firmly rooted in books solely about white people, white bodies, white history, white culture. If you want to find books to share with your children that break this mold you’re pretty much on your own.
There are some CM homeschooling mothers doing this mold-breaking work on their websites and on Instagram — I’ve mentioned Amber O’Neal Johnston of @heritagemomblog several times because I respect her enormously and value her work; she and Tanisha McRae of @read_therainbow are my favorite and most trusted voices on this topic — but Stories of Color is the first project I’ve seen of its kind.
Its curator, Nicole Cottrell (@nicolecottrell_) explains on the website:
Stories of Color was created by a 10-year Charlotte Mason homeschooler dissatisfied with the predominantly white, euro-centric book lists and resources so commonplace among homeschooling communities. If we’re truly looking to provide the next generation with a rich, holistic view of history, it requires we share more diverse, multicultural stories that bring new ideas, experiences, and perspectives to life for our children.
YES. This is so necessary and so incredibly welcome.
And if that’s not amazing enough, the database is community-led — users can submit book titles, and/or edit/flag existing titles themselves 🤯
Maybe this is so meaningful to me because I spent the last year in the homeschooling trenches (I am still digging out emotionally, tbh) and even I, a person who knows a whole dang lot about children’s books, sometimes struggled to find representative books about particular time periods or ones that were age-appropriate for my kids. But you don’t have to be a homeschooler to get value out of this — you merely have to be a person interested in exploring a more inclusive selection of books.
You can browse the book lists (there are more than 30 of them). You can search the database just about every which way (there is even a little video that walks you through the process). The generosity of this project frankly astounds me. I have half a mind to reach out to Nicole and see if she’d be up for an interview for a future issue (is that something you’d be interested in? If so, hit reply and let me know).
It’s things like this that light me up and make me hopeful that we can build the world we want to live in. (Don’t believe books can do this? You’re not listening hard enough to people who never saw themselves in the books they read when they were growing up — representation matters!) I’m so grateful and happy I can share it with you.
Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah
Yes to interviews!!