Roxanne Feldman (AKA fairrosa), who is originally from Taiwan, and I are longtime close friends; she was an early and very important sounding board for me as I worked through how to tell the story that became Africa is My Home. For both of us the topics of diversity and identity have long been important, ones we constantly discuss and reflect upon in terms of our practice at school and outside in the children’s book world. Roxanne has now started a blog series in which she thoughtfully and carefully considers these topics. Anyone who knows Roxanne is aware of how thoughtful and passionate she is on these issues and how much we always learn from her. I highly recommend reading the following first three in the series and following her blog so as to read the rest.
- Doing the Diversity Thing Diversely, Part 1 in which she gives her own background, experiences, and evolving thinking about this topic.
- Doing the Diversity Thing Diversely, Part 2: The Importance of Fretting in which she considers issues around the writing in and outside of cultures.
- Doing the Diversity Thing Diversely, Part 3: How Can We Know When We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know? in which she considers the complexities of reviewing especially after reading Melinda Lo’s Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews.
educating alice 
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