Global Read Webinar Series
Diverse Books for the K – 12 Classroom
FEBRUARY – JUNE 2020
All sessions are free and open to the public. All times listed refer to Eastern Standard Time (EST). Sponsored by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, the South Asia National Outreach Consortium, the Middle East Outreach Council, and African Studies Outreach Council, The National Consortium for Teaching about Asia.
WEBINAR SCHEDULE
February 26, 2020: Africana Book Award – Africa Access
Check out the recorded webinar here.
This month’s book award is sponsored by the Africana Book Award. Three time CABA winner Elizabeth Zunon will discuss her award-winning CABA books and her career. Her 2019 book, Grandpa Cacao, A Tale of Chocolate from Farm to Family combines her talents as illustrator and author. The picture book connects past and present as a girl bakes a chocolate cake with her father and learns how her grandfather harvested cacao beans in Ivory Coast, West Africa. This is a picture book appropriate for PreK – 2nd grade.
March 18 2020: Middle East Outreach Council
Check out the recorded webinar here.
This webinar will explore the book, Darius the Great is Not OKAY by by Adib Khorram (Dial Books, 2018), winner of the 2019 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. Darius Kellner knows a lot about tea, Tolkien, and taroffing, one of many Iranian customs Adib Khorram shares with the reader of this revelatory middle school-level novel. When a family trip brings socially awkward Darius to Iran for the first time from Portland, Oregon, he discovers his first true friend and a place that begins to feel like home. The Iran of this novel is as multidimensional as the diverse characters who inhabit it. Co-sponsored by the Middle East Outreach Council and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Recommended grade level 7 – 9.
April 14 2020: South Asia Book Award and South Asia National Outreach Council present Barb Rosenstock and her book The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a Changing India, and a Hidden World of Art. Check out the recorded webinar here. In 1947, Nek Chand began building a Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, using natural and discarded manmade materials, including broken glass, porcelain from chipped sinks, old bicycles and rusty pipes. Readers will learn of Chand’s marvelous creations in this picture book biography with detailed illustrations and a gatefold photograph. (Grades 2-5)
May 11 2020: Américas Award
CHECK OUT THE RECORDED VIDEO HERE. Francie Latour’s 2019 Américas Award Honor Book, Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings tells the story of Ti Chou (tee-SHOO), a Haitian-American girl who travels to visit her beloved and convention-defying aunt, a painter who lives in Haiti. Rich with history, heroes, and cultural pride, the book traces Ti Chou’s journey to a distant ancestral home, and the powerful family connection that bridges the physical, cultural, and generational divides of her hyphenated identity. Sponsored by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs with additional support from Florida International University, Stanford University, The Ohio State University, UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Florida, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Austin, University of Utah, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
June 23, 2020: Freeman Book Award – The National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This webinar will focus on the book, Girl of the Southern Sea by Michelle Kadarusman (Pajama Press). TO ATTEND THIS WEBINAR, PLEASE REGISTER HERE.
From the time she was a little girl, Nia has dreamed up adventures about the Javanese mythical princess, Dewi Kadita. Now fourteen, Nia would love nothing more than to continue her education and become a writer. But high school costs too much. Her father sells banana fritters at the train station, but too much of his earnings go toward his drinking habit. Too often Nia is left alone to take over the food cart as well as care for her brother and their home in the Jakarta slums. But Nia is determined to find a way to earn her school fees. After she survives a minibus accident unharmed and the locals say she is blessed with ‘good luck magic,’ Nia exploits the notion for all its worth by charging double for her fried bananas. Selling superstitions can be dangerous, and when the tide turns it becomes clear that Nia’s future is being mapped without her consent. If Nia is to write a new story for herself, she must overcome more obstacles than she could ever have conceived of for her mythical princess, and summon courage she isn’t sure she has.
World Area Book Awards 