Caption ILLUSTRATION: SUZANNE KAUFMAN
43
suggestions for different age groups and provides ideas for
applying lessons from the books to the classroom.
Kicking off this school year, the book for August 2019 was
All Are Welcome Here, written by Alexandra Penfold. “No matter
how you start your day, what you wear, when you play. Or
if you come from far away. All are welcome here.”
The lively picture book sends a clear message that our
public schools are places where every child is welcome. The
calendar suggests hosting a community-building back-toschool
event that opens opportunities for talking about
individual differences, diversity, and how we can learn from
each other.
USE BOOKS FEATURED IN THE CALENDAR
ANY TIME OF THE YEAR
Lubna and Pebble, written by Wendy Meddour, the June
2020 book, explores the wrenching world of refugees where a
little girl’s only friend is a treasured pebble she found on the
beach where she landed with her father after fleeing war at
home.
Pebble listens to her stories; its smoothness comforts her
when she’s scared. But one day, Lubna realizes that a
new boy in the “world
of tents” might need
Pebble more than she
does.
“Lubna and Pebble
is one of the books that
I am looking forward
to sharing,” says Carol
Bauer, a fourth-grade
teacher at Bethel Elementary
School in York
County, Va. Bauer, who is the past chair of NEA’s Read Across
America Advisory Committee, adds that even if a book is
featured in a particular month, it can be shared any time during
the year.
“Students in fourth grade hear the word ‘refugee’ but
don’t have a good understanding of what that might mean.
This book will help with their understanding,” she says. “I
also have my students collect money using the ‘Trick or Treat
for UNICEF’ program. This book will be another way to allow
my students to understand where the UNICEF money goes
and who it helps.”
MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT BOOKS
FEATURE DIVERSE THEMES AND CHARACTERS
The Hero Next Door, featured in the Read Across America
calendar in the middle-grade section, reminds students that
not all heroes wear capes. They can look just like them. They
can even be them.
“The New Kid could have been my superhero name,”
writes middle-grade novelist Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich,
editor of The Hero Next Door, a collection
of middle-grade short stories from
some of the best known diverse books
authors. “School after school, classroom
after classroom, playground after playground
… I’d swoop in, hoping to dazzle
and impress, save the day somehow.
Each time I hoped to get it exactly
right; each time I got it so, so wrong.”
When she was the new kid again
in sixth grade, Rhuday-Perkovich’s
mother asked the principal to make
sure she’d have classes with other
p42-44_1910_ReadAcrossRebrand_Layout 1.indd 2 www.gae8./3o1r/g19/k n1o0:w10 |A M11
/know
/k
