Diversity & Inclusion Book of the Month Club

Our Diversity & Inclusion committee is committed to helping our school community promote a culture of respect, social justice, equity and openness.
 
To help our families on this journey, our team of parents and teachers have created a  Book of the Month club for both families and adults.  We hope this program will spark robust conversations around inclusion and diversity while bringing us together as a community with shared ideals.  
 
In an effort to make these books as accessible as possible, books can be purchased off of our Amazon Wish List for your child's classroom, and will be available to "check out" for at home reading. 
 
January's theme is Socioeconomic Diversity

Kindergarten & Grade 1: Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts
This book is about Jeremy, a young boy who really wants these cool shoes that many of his other classmates have.  His family cannot afford to buy them.  He learns an important lesson about balancing needs and wants.  More importantly he learns about kindness and generosity.

Grades 2 & 3: As Fast as Words Could Fly  by Pamela M. Tuck
A thirteen- year- old African American boy in 1960's Greenville, North Carolina, uses his typing skills to make a statement as part of the Civil Rights Movement.  Based on true events.

Grades 4 & 5 (two selections):
Serafina's Promise  by Ann Burg
Serafina made a secret promise to go to school and learn to read so she could become a doctor with her best friend, Julie Marie.  But following her dream isn't easy- endless chores, little money and stomach-rumbling hunger all test her resolve.  When an earthquake hits and separates Serafina from her friends and family, she encounters her biggest test of all.  Serafina made a secret promise.  Will she survive to keep it?

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
The Hundred Dresses won a Newberry Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since.  At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day.  Wanda claims that she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn't and bullies her mercilessly.  The class feels terrible when she is pulled out of school, but by that time it's too late for apologies.  Maddie, one of Wanda's classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again."