Open-access E-journal for 
International Scholars, Practitioners, and Students of Multicultural Education
 ISSN: 1559-5005
Copyright © 1999-2006 by 
Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education

THIS ISSUE
(SPRING 2004: vol. 6, no. 1)
Theme: Multicultural Education Curriculum for Social Studies

 ARTICLES:
 Gallavan & Putney • Halgao • Mule •  Ndura & Lafer •  Porfilio & McClary
INSTRUCTIONAL IDEAS:
Betts • Kidney-Cummins

REVIEWS:
Art • Books • Multimedia

CONTRIBUTORS

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Previous Issues
Call for Papers
Call for Reviewers
Issue Themes
Acknowledgments
About EMME
About the Editors

Heewon Chang, Ph. D.
 Editor-in-Chief
Christopher Bittenbender, Ph. D.
 Copy Editor
  Hwa Young Caruso,  Ed. D. &  John Caruso, Jr. , Ph. D.
 Art Review Editors 
?
Assistant Editor

Eastern University
Education Department
1300 Eagle Road
St. Davids, PA,
19087-3696



 

BOOK REVIEWS

Literature for Young Readers | Professional Literature

(provided by the editorial staff of EMME unless indicated otherwise)


 Literature for Young Readers

Ajmera, Maya & Versola, Anna R.  (2001).  Children from Australia to Zimbabwe: A Photographic Journey Around the World.  Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.  64 pp., ISBN: 1-57091-478-8 (hc),  $18.95 (ages 9-12).

This delightful and creative "A to Z book," which includes nations from Australia to Zimbabwe, highlights various cultures as represented by children.  Colorful photos of places and people, particularly children, are striking.  Each page focuses on one nation that starts with a letter in the alphabet and mentions other countries that also begin with that letter. The author gives a demographic and cultural overview of people and places in each featured country.  Students will enjoy this book because of the way it illustrates and explains children's lives in other countries. Teachers can use this book in social studies to introduce comparative perspectives of children's lives around the world. 

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Ansary, Mir Tamim. (1999).  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Chicago: Heinemann Library.  31 pp., ISBN: 1-57572-873-7, $22.79 (ages 4-8).

This book will help young students understand the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The author gives an overview of African-Americans' struggles with disparate treatment, starting with slavery.  Historical details are explained and shared in a child-friendly language and are crucial for understanding what Dr. King did to advance equal rights for people of color in the United States.  The book includes advanced vocabulary and simplified definitions of terms for students and teachers.  It contains a timeline of events that chronicle the epic struggle for equal rights in America. This informative and child-friendly book can be used as supplementary material for instructional lessons in which the life of Dr. King and the history of the Civil Rights movement are discussed.        

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Arlon, Penelope, Mack, Lorrie, Shalev, Zahavit.  (2003). How People Live. New York, NY: DK Publishing. 297 pp., ISBN:  0-7894-9867-7(hc), $29.99 (all ages).

This interesting and breath-taking book illustrates how people live daily in various countries in different continents.  The book opens the eyes of readers to different people and lesser-known cultures. Understanding these little-celebrated cultures, the readers will be able to form a more comprehensive and multicultural worldview. The vivid pictures in this book show each cultural group working and living.  This book is filled with statistics about each area and informative descriptions about daily life. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is what the authors term the “global village.”  The global village represents what the world would look like if it was proportionally reduced to only 100 people.  The global village explains how many of these people would be able to eat, have clean water, and live in safe houses. This book is visually attractive and informative.  Teachers should include this book in social studies lessons about world cultures and geography.

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Freedman, Russell.  (2004).  The Voice that Challenged the Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights.  109 pp.,  New York, NY: Clarion Books.  ISBN: 0618159762 (pk), $18.00 (ages 9 and up).

This biography of Marian Anderson presents the African-American contralto's gripping story of struggles, persistence, and success in America’s racist society.  Born in Philadelphia in 1897, Anderson was recognized for her vocal talent as a child.  Her greatness as a world-class concert singer resulted from a combination of her enormous talent, self-determination, and support from home, church, and professional colleagues.  After experiencing several rejections and limited opportunities to perform in America due to her race, Ms. Anderson went to Europe and built her career by singing for appreciative audiences in major concert halls as well as for royal families and the Pope.  Her voice was praised by the celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini as "a voice...heard once in a hundred years." Despite her success in Europe, she was not welcome in concert halls in the United States because of a national policy of racial segregation.  Her historic concert at Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in 1939 was a twisted result of racists' banning "colored" artists from giving concerts in Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution.    Readers of all ages will appreciate her talent and lifetime accomplishments and become inspired by her struggles, persistence, and determination.  Historic photos included in the book add depth to the story.  The book, written in a readable prose, will serve as an excellent  reference for teachers and children of ages 9-12.  

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Murphy, Jim.  (2003). An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. New York, NY: Clarion Books. 165 pp., ISBN: 0-395-77608-2, $17.00 (ages 9-12 ).

 This descriptive tale about the plague of Yellow Fever that swept across Philadelphia killing everyone in its path is both historical and fascinating.  The plague started off infecting a few and turned into a widespread destroyer of families, communities, and eventually whole neighborhoods. This book describes the deadly infection and the doctors that furiously tried to curtail the harmful and devastating effects of the disease. Many doctors like Benjamin Rush are focal points for many of the chapters, detailing their efforts to prevent more people from dying. This book shows the way ethnic communities and Blacks were treated during this stressful time.  This informative book would be an asset to any American history curriculum, particularly concerning Philadelphia.

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Press, Petra.  (1994).  Multicultural Portrait of Learning in America. New York: Marshall Cavendish. pp.78, ISBN: 1-85435-665-8, (ages 13-17).

The history of education in America is a complex story but this book explains it in an effective way by starting with the cultures that shaped early American history.  The book describes how the American high school evolved and who had legal access to education during the early 1800’s.  The multicultural value of this book lies in the explanation of how Native Americans, Europeans, African-Americans, and women influenced and shaped education in the United States.  It explains how each group eventually gained access to public education. Teachers may use the entire book or select a section of the book to create lessons detailing about a particular group's struggle for equal education in America. 

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Reeves, Pamela.  (1998).  Ellis Island:  Gateway to the American Dream.  New York:  Barnes & Noble Books.  pp.144, ISBN: 0-88029-586-4, $19.95 (ages 12 and up).

This book explains how the European immigrants entered America through Ellis Island.  It starts with the entry of diverse groups in America and details the changes in immigration policies affecting Ellis Island.  It explains the struggles and barriers that immigrants faced when they came to America and what they endured while creating their own ethnic communities.  This book encourages readers to find their own history by tracing family roots back to their ancestors.  It contains a table of immigration identifying the numbers of immigrants that arrived in America between1892-1954.  Educators can use this book in conjunction with lessons about the history of immigration, which in turn can lead to the study of contemporary immigration.  This book is also a helpful guide to prepare students for a field trip to Ellis Island in New York.

 


Professional Literature

Bruno, Frank A. and Beilke, Patricia, F.  (2003).  Afghanistan and Afghan Americans:  Helping K-8 School Librarians and Educators Understand the History, Culture, and Literature.  Multicultural Review 12, (3),  38-46.

Wertsman, Vladimir. (2003). Righteous Gentiles Among Nations" Multicultural Review 13, (4), 26-30.

 

 Multicultural Review, a journal "dedicated to a better understanding of ethnic, racial, and religious diversity," presents articles, annotated bibliographies, and lists of videos and websites pertaining to various social studies topics.  In particular, two recent articles may serve as useful references for social studies instruction on Afghanistan and the Holocaust.  The first article, "Afghanistan and Afghanistan Americans," provides an informative historical overview of modern Afghanistan and its relationship to the United States, complete with an extensive list of print and multimedia resources.  The second article, "Righteous Gentiles Among Nations," contains an annotated bibliography of non-fictional books about Europeans and others who aided the Jews in their attempts to escape or survive the Holocaust during Nazi Germany (1933-45).  K-8 teachers and social studies teachers may find these articles informative and useful for their instruction.   Education majors can benefit from articles written in an accessible language that are filled with rich resources.

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Chawla, Louise. (Ed.)  (2002).  Growing up in an Urbanising World.  London, UK: Earthscan. 254pp., ISBN:1-85383-828-4 (pk.), £19.99 

Book cover This book reports on research projects of the UNESCO's community development initiative, called Growing Up in Cities (GUIC).  Involving poor children and youth as partners in their community development, researchers conducted participatory research in urban sites in eight different countries: i.e.,  Argentina, Australia, India, Norway, Poland, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States.  Four of these countries were included in the original GUIC projects, initiated by Kevin Lynch, MIT Professor of Urban Planning, in the 1970s. The new GUIC projects, revived after 25 years and published in this book, utilized the original research and development methods and techniques.  Through the projects, children and youth learned a democratic process of assessing their needs, discussing solutions, and making changes in their community with the help of supportive adults.  Research results reveal that children perceive their environments with differing levels of satisfaction, although they are similarly impoverished, and that they can be empowered to become effective change agents, when guided through the process and supported with resources and encouragement.  This is a must-read book for students and practitioners of urban planning and policy-making as well as educators and educational administrators of urban children.  The practical research methods and techniques used by GUIC researchers can be adopted for social studies curriculum to help develop urban middle and high school students as democratic citizens and changing agents. 

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Driskell, David.  (2002).  Creating Better Cities for Children and Youth.  London, UK: Earthscan. 208pp., ISBN:1-85383-853-5 (pk), £19.95 

Book cover

 Published as part of the UNESCO's "Growing up in Cities" project, this manual provides practical guidance for how to plan and implement participatory community development projects involving children and youth.  The book is built on several participatory principles:  (1) children and youth are valuable contributors to their environments; (2) they are capable of participating in community development planning in meaningful ways; and (3) the planning should lead to changes.  The framework of community development projects was tested in multiple sites around the world and is reported in a companion book, entitled Growing up in a Urbanising World.  Community development researchers and activists may find many field-tested methods of project organization and management as well as data collection tools practical and helpful.  The book is user-friendly with well-organized headings and subheadings and ample graphic illustrations.  

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McCall, Ava and Ristow, Thelma (2003).  Teaching State History: A Guide to Developing a Multicultural Curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.  231 pp., ISBN: 0-325-00482-X (pk), $23.00.

 A university professor of social studies education and an elementary classroom teacher collaborated in creating this book.  They developed and tested four multicultural units on Wisconsin state history for a fourth grade classroom.  Their lessons focused on four topics, such as "integrating family history with state history," "learning about the first people in the state: traditions and conflicts," "exploring diverse perspectives on becoming a state and on voting rights," and "learning about state industries."  They incorporated in their lessons "[school district, state, and national] standards, multicultural ideas, best teaching practices, and social constructivist, culturally relevant teaching methods." The book is not about a collection of units, but about the teachers' instructional planning and implementation process and fourth graders' responses to their instruction.  Readers will gain valuable insights from the "ethnographic" data of the instruction and responses.  Although the authors developed this curricular project specifically for a school district in Wisconsin, the basic concepts and instructional ideas of each unit can easily be replicated in other school districts and states.  It is an excellent resource for elementary and secondary social studies teachers. The joint authorship of a scholar and an practitioner certainly gives authority to this practice-oriented book.

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Williams, Dawn.  (2002).  Who's Who in Black Canada: Black Success and Black Excellence in Canada.  Toronto, ON:  D. P. Williams & Associates.  421 pp, ISBN: 0-9731384-1-6 (pk), $29.99

This directory lists over 700 living Black Canadians who are accomplished in academia, medicine, business, law, arts, athletics, and many other fields.  Some were born in Canada and others immigrated from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.  Although the book presents only those who were willing to be included in the directory, the list is extensive and the biographic information of entrants is rich.  As the editor claims, the book certainly "inform[s], educate[s], and celebrate[s]...men and women...contributing to their professions and to their communities."  People are listed alphabetically by their last name.  The amount of information is overwhelming and reading each brief biography requires a type of self-discipline different from reading prose, but it can be just as engaging.  The indexes at the end of the book, organized by their residence and their primary activity, make the use of detailed information more manageable.  A helpful curriculum guide suggesting how to use the directory information in history and a social studies curriculum accompanies the book.  Teachers could use this directory as a reference book of the contributions by Black Canadians and also as raw data for a demographic analysis in a statistics lesson.