Read aloud books for Black History Month

First off, can we agree that making sure our students see ample representation in our read-aloud books is a MUST? Does it have to be just for certain heritage months? Absolutely NOT! As teachers, and more specifically Bilingual Teachers, we should make an effort to provide our students with materials they can connect to. So, let's celebrate BIPOC authors and characters with our students EVERY DAY.

Below, you will find several of the picture books I have used in the classroom. Most are in English and difficult to find in Spanish but I make sure to use them during our ELD (English Language Development) time and focus on vocabulary.

Pictured are some of the books my students and I have enjoyed. You can see a GROWING list of read-aloud book suggestions by clicking the image.

For this post, I would like to focus on two of my favorite books. They are easy to find in Amazon or Thriftbooks (my favorite places to shop for books) and have great illustrations.

You can click on the individual titles below to view them on Amazon.

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Kamala and Maya's Big Idea by Meena Harris

Written by Meena Harris, Kamala and Maya's Big Idea is a story inspired by true events in the author's family. Harris' book relates the story the author heard about her mother and aunt Kamala as a child. Does the name sound familiar? What you're thinking is right! Meena Harris' aunt is Vice President Kamala Harris!

The story starts with two young sisters, the author's mother and aunt, looking out the window and wishing they had swings, a slide, or flowers to enjoy in the courtyard. Together they come up with the idea to convince the landlord to build a small playground for residents in their building. The girls are confronted with hard NO's but they do not let that derail their dreams. The two sisters work hard to rally their community and together help turn their courtyard in to the playground of their dreams. Every member of the community pitches in to help the girls because each one has something unique to offer.

WHY I LOVE THIS BOOK

Kamala and Maya's Big Idea is more than just a picture book; it is inspiration for any human being no matter how small. The characters in the story, although they are little children, make a huge impact in their community and ultimately turn a simple IDEA in to a reality. Although this book has a good plot and sequence of events to place in to chronological order, I decided to stick with vocabulary and grammar when we read this story. I did not use the book for our SLA lesson. It is an easy-read and simple to translate (if you want to take the time) but we ended up using this read-aloud for our ELD time. My first grade students made fabulous text-to-self connections and we practiced sharing those connections in English as best they could.

Since we celebrate BIPOC authors and characters all year long, this book was perfect! The author, niece to VP Kamala Harris, seemed like a celebrity to my students when I mentioned her relation. I also made sure to mention that the illustrator Ana Ramírez González is a Mexican artist that worked on the same team that made the film Coco.

Your Name is a song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow

Your name is a song is a beautiful picture book about the importance of names. A young girl, the protagonist of the story, does not want to go to school anymore because she says her teacher and classmates cannot pronounce her name. They even make fun of her name. She seems very disheartened, but her mom helps her realize that all names are unique and beautiful. Each name is a song! The story takes the reader through a list of names of different origins (African, Asian, Spanish, etc.) and turns them in to a song. All names are beautiful; they are calming, come from the heart or can be fire in your belly. The next day, the girl goes to school with a new attitude until her teacher stops at her name when calling attendance. The girl speaks up and shares with her class what she learned about names. Everyone wants their name turned in to a song and love singing the girl's name too.

WHY I LOVE THIS BOOK

My first graders' first reaction to this book, and one I was so proud of, was that it was similar to another book we had read before. We had read Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre | Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martínez-Neal earlier in the year and my students loved it! After reading Your Name is a Song, students had a lot of text-to-text connections as well as text-to-self connections. This book is a bit more difficult to translate so it makes for the perfect book for ELD. We focused again on vocabulary and sharing what we observed in the illustrations that help us with comprehension.

Being in a Bilingual classroom full of beautiful and unique names has always motivated me to set aside a few minutes and allow THE IMPORTANCE of NAMES to become a small teachable moment. I show students my name and mention how much I love my name and what it means. We look at everybody's name and do the same. My main point with this conversation is that our names are OUR names. They are proper nouns that require a capital letter and they cannot be changed or modified. They are unique and beautiful just the way they are. THEY DESERVE TO BE SUNG. They do not need to be changed so that they are easier to pronounce. We ask the other person to please pronounce it correctly and we show them how!

With this book, I also make an effort to emphasize that the author and illustrator are both BIPOC. Thompkins-Bigelow, the author, is a writer and educator that centers the experience of black and muslim children. The illustrator, Luisa Uribe, is a Colombian artist.

Thank you if you have stuck around until the end of the post! I hope you enjoy reading about NEW read-aloud picture books as much as I do. If you are looking for more inspiration, please make sure to click the tab for BOOKS on my page to view a GROWING list of book suggestions. I will be working on it all-year-round!