It's October 31, the first of the Days of the Dead in Mexico, and Maria Molina and her family are in the graveyard to honor her baby brother Pablo, who died when he was just a few months old. A candle flickers in the dark night, and on Pablo's grave they have placed his favorite toys, some chocolate, a sugar skull, and even a small 'Bread of the Dead.'Throughout Mexico, other families are doing exactly the same thing, for the threeday festival of The Days of the Dead is one of Mexico's most important holidays.

An aid for librarians and teachers interested in exposing students in kindergarten through high school with an understanding and appreciation of the people, history, and art and political, social, and economic problems of Central and South American countries, and Latino-heritage people in the United States.

"Bravo! They've given adults and young girls a much-needed treasure map of heroines and 'she-roes'...It blazes an important path in the forest of children's literature."—Jim Trelease.

A comprehensive guide to multicultural literature for children, this valuable resource features more than 1,600 titles—including fiction, folktales, poetry, and song books—that focus on diverse cultural groups. The selected titles, pubished between the 1970s and 1990s are suitable for use with preschoolers through sixth graders and are likely to be found on the shelves of school and public libraries. Topics are timely, with an emphasis on books that reflect the needs and interests of today's children. Each detailed entry includes bibliographic information. Use level is also included, as are cultural designation, subjects, and a summary. The invaluable Subject Access section incorporates use level culture information.

This volume visits death in children’s literature from around the world, making a substantial contribution to the dialogue between the expanding fields of Childhood Studies, Children’s Literature, and Death Studies. Considering both textual and pictorial representations of death, contributors focus on the topic of death in children’s literature as a physical reality, a philosophical concept, a psychologically challenging adjustment, and/or a social construct. Essays covering literature from the US, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, India, and Iran display a diverse range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Carefully organized sections interrogate how classic texts have been adapted for the twenty-first century, how death has been politicized, ritualized, or metaphorized, and visual strategies for representing death, and how death has been represented within the context of play. Asking how different cultures present the concept of death to children, this volume is the first to bring together a global range of perspective on death in children’s literature and will be a valuable contribution to an array of disciplines.

Based on new research, this book offers insights into the reality of immigration and its sociocultural impact with a focus on the experience of young children and their families coming to the USA. Wilma Robles-Melendez and Wayne Driscoll discuss immigration realities and their social and educational implications and review the current literature on studies and reports about immigration. They also provide insights and experiences of young immigrant children and their families with a focus on the USA and offer recommendations for early childhood practice for programs serving young immigrant children. The key subjects addressed include socially just practices, developmentally based programs, services for young children and families with diverse and cultural backgrounds. Immigration in the USA is discussed here as part of the global crisis in immigration and the lessons learned will be vital for educators, researchers and policy makers around the world.

This book explores the issues faced by immigrant children through the lens of children's literature. The authors employ the UN convention of the Rights of the Child, the lens of equity, and Freire's principles of critical consciousness as a framework for analysing children's literature and immigration. They focus on circumstances and experiences of immigration from the perspective of young children who are leaving their homelands and growing up as immigrants. The book focuses primarily on children from birth to 8 years old but with crossover and implications for older children. The chapters reveal the social, economic, and political issues faced by child immigrants, refugees and asylees throughout the global context, viewed through and alongside children's literature. The book provides suggestions for the implementation of children's literature in the curriculum and provides tools for educators and researchers working with immigrant and refugee children, showing how they can better understand their students and families. A variety of children's literature is covered, including analysis of works by Jairo Buitrago, Yanksook Choi, Sandra leGuen, Rosemary McCartney, Bao Phi and Jeanette Winter.