Multicultural posters!

As a member of SMEA an e-mail was sent out to us last week providing us with details for a professional development opportunity, it read "Kappa Delta Pi is hosting a Multicultural Poster Contest in celebration of Martin Luther King Day". I thought this would be a great chance to go check out some new multicultural literature. I thought it would be interesting to start applying what we have been talking about in class to the books introduced and shared on the posters.

When I arrived to the multicultural poster contest, I was somewhat disappointed. Only six posters were put on display! I thought to myself, either this was not advertised well or people are unsure of what qualifies a book as decent multicultural literature appropriate for a classroom. Being only the third week of class, I still am learning about the in's and out's of diverse literature and I am lucky to have this class to guide my learning.

The first poster on display was Jingle Dancer. The poster was very artisitic and eye catching. In the center of the poster was a dress that was drawn on and attached to it were bells. I thought this was very creative and would have caught my eye if I never heard of this book. The poster had several quotes from the book and was very delightful to look at. This was definitely one of the more intriguing posters and it made me want to add Jingle Dancer to my collection. Another poster that caught my eye was small but very professional looking. It was focusing on the book Bread, Bread, Bread by Ann Morris. From the cover of the book which was printed on the poster one may not have thought this book was about diversity although the first sentence of the book is "People eat bread all over the world". The book then shares the different types of bread that are a part of different cultures around the world. This book focuses on many cultures and not just one. There were several other posters on display, two of which were about a book on Martin Luther King Jr.

After viewing the rather small collection of multicultural literature posters I began to think of all the diverse books that I would have liked to share or would have liked to seen advertised. If only this contest was more towards the end of the semester, we all would have gotten a chance to share what we are learning about diverse and multicultural literature and shared the books we are all going to add to our collections!