This is a resource list for families who want to engage in discussions about cultural awareness and diversity. It includes background reading for grown-ups as well as books and online resources to share with kids.

Online Resources

Teaching Young Children About Race - Teaching for Change
Guide for parents and teachers.

Explaining the News to Our Kids - Common Sense Media
Tips by age on how to talk to kids about the news.

Talking to Kids About Race - National Geographic
Suggestions on how to raise an anti-racist child.

How to Teach Children About Cultural Awareness and Diversity - PBS Kids for Parents
Helps parents teach children to understand and respect similarities and differences.

Helpful Books

Children’s books can be a great tool to learn about historical racism as well as a starting point for discussions about cultural awareness, diversity, race and racism today. Here are some recommendations to support conversations around these issues. For a more complete list, please click for the printable or online lists.

Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow 
Frustrated by a day full of teachers and classmates mispronouncing her beautiful name, a little girl tells her mother she never wants to come back to school. In response, the girl's mother teaches her about the musicality of African, Asian, Black-American, Latinx, and Middle Eastern names.

Eyes That Speak to the Stars by Joanna Ho
In this book about self and heritage, a young Asian boy notices that his eyes look different from his peers after seeing his friend’s drawing of them.

Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race by Megan Madison
This read-aloud board book begins the conversation on race, with a supportive approach that considers both the child and the adult. Stunning art accompanies the simple and interactive text, and the backmatter offers additional resources and ideas for extending this discussion.

We Are a Garden: A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America by Lisa Westberg Peters
This lyrical and extremely timely picture book illuminates the many different migrants who have made their homes in North America through the centuries.

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold
Illustrations and simple, rhyming text introduce a school where diversity is celebrated and songs, stories, and talents are shared.

Happy in Our Skin by Fran Manushkin
All children can see themselves, and open their eyes to the world around them, in this sweet, scrumptious celebration of skin in all its many, many, wonderful forms.

I Am Enough by Grace Byers
Shares a story of loving who you are, respecting others and being kind to one another.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
In the summer of 1968, three sisters travel to Oakland to meet the mother who abandoned them and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper
When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

New Kid by Jerry Craft
Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

Blended by Sharon M. Draper
Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.

March: Book One by John Lewis
The first in a graphic novel trilogy, March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation.

Barakah Beats by Maleeha Siddiqui
Twelve-year-old Nimra Sharif has spent her whole life in Islamic school, but now it's time to go to "real school." Unfortunately, middle school is hard. The teachers are mean, the schedule is confusing, and her best friend starts giving hijab-wearing Nimra the cold shoulder around the other kids. A powerful and joyous novel about a Muslim girl who finds her voice on her own terms.

Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi
Yusuf is excited to start middle school in his small Texas town, but with the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks coming up, suddenly it feels like the country's same anger and grief is all focused on his Muslim community.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends.

This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell
Learn about social identities, the history of racism and resistance against it, and how you can use your anti-racist lens and voice to move the world toward equity and liberation.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds
Young adult version of: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. This book shines a light on the many forms of racist ideas and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.

Dream, Annie, Dream by Waka T. Brown
In this empowering deconstruction of the so-called American Dream, a twelve-year-old Japanese American girl grapples with, and ultimately rises above, the racism and trials of middle school she experiences while chasing her dreams.

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