Celebrating Hispanic Month with Books!!!

Did you know...?

• That Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated every year between September 15 through October 15?
  
• In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson received authorization from Congress to proclaim a week in September  as National Hispanic Heritage Month?
• President Ronald Reagan expanded the celebration from a week to a month, making 2008 the 20th annual celebration?
• September 15 was chosen as the starting date for the celebration because it marks the independence anniversary of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras.

Now that we all have more background about Hispanic Heritage Month, I would like to celebrate this special month with some of my favorite books. Multicultural Books are a wonderful resource but not fully explored! Let's be the change...let's be the ones who start integrating more multicultural books in our daily read alouds and in our book clubs. Something so small yet so significant can build such a strong connection between you and your ELLs. What are you waiting for? Come on, let's be the change!

If you got some time, I invite you to go to Scholastic's website and watch the special project created by Target called Dream in Color with lessons plans to celebrate all heritages and cultures! I enjoyed watching and listening to designer Sami Hayek talking about his dreams and his challenges. I like his idea of being "an explorer of cultures, thoughts, experiences, people, problems and how to solve them." 

And with this idea of being an explorer, I invite you to explore Children's Book Press as your first stop to multicultural books. Here is the first book I would like to share with you as part of our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month:

This is a bilingual (Spanish/English) story about the author's life, Amada Irma Perez, who was only five years old when her family left Mexico for the United States. The new challenges ahead of her, leaving  Dad behind for a while, moving to a new country and speaking a new language was too overwhelming so she decided to keep a journal as a way to deal with everything. Beautifully written with amazing illustrations, I promised that the ending of this book is as hopeful as a new beginning.  Happy reading!