A powerful story about friendship and acceptance

Maritza Mejia’s book gave me goose bumps by the third page I read. Vanilla and Chocolate tells in few words how a diversity conflict might arise and, also how easily can be thwarted, given the right responses.

Although the moral of the story is clearly there, the author restrains herself for shouting into your ear what your conclusion should be. On the contrary, the story resembles more an objective chronicle where a teacher notices an undesirable conflict taking place in her classroom and decides to actively intervene to solve it.

I admire the way that Maritza handles the change in Vanilla’s parent’s hearts. In few words, with an unpretentious tone and anti-lecturing attitude, Maritza puzzles out what's in the core of human beings’ biases and how easy is to revert a discriminatory behavior before it even escalates. The illustrations are also simple, unpretentious, and delightful. I especially like the image of the ice-cream bowl that only labels the words Vanilla and Chocolate.

This author is certainly a gem within the bilingual books world! I’ll be looking forward to her upcoming titles! Buy links for Maritza Martinez Mejia in www.luzdelmes.com

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2017 (1/27/17) #readyourworld is its fourth year and was founded by Valarie Budayr from Jump Into A Book and Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom. Our mission is to raise awareness on the ongoing need to include kid’s books that celebrate diversity in home and school bookshelves while also working diligently to get more of these types of books into the hands of young readers, parents and educators. 

Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day holiday, the MCBD Team are on a mission to change all of that.

Current Sponsors:  MCBD 2017 is honored to have some amazing Sponsors on board. Platinum Sponsors include Scholastic, Barefoot Books and Broccoli. Other Medallion Level Sponsors include heavy-hitters like Author Carole P. Roman, Audrey Press, Candlewick Press,  Fathers Incorporated, KidLitTV, Capstone Young Readers, ChildsPlayUsa, Author Gayle Swift, Wisdom Tales Press, Lee& Low Books, The Pack-n-Go Girls, Live Oak Media, Author Charlotte Riggle, Chronicle Books and Pomelo Books