*AD – the item in this review was gifted to our household for this post. All opinions, as always, are our own.
When it comes to reading bedtime stories to the children each night, we love to pick up new books to keep things fresh. More and more, we have been focused on adding in books that depict other cultures and other people. Learning about various cultures and understanding that there are different people that all have different beliefs and upbringings is really important in our home. The George Padmore Institute is doing a wonderful job publishing children’s books and reading material that fill the void that the 2020 Black Lives Matter campaign highlighted was needed. Dream to Change the World was the first in this series of new publications, with Jump Up! A Story of Carnival being the second.
Jump Up! A Story of Carnival is a beautiful, colorful book about a young girl called Cecille, who has not had a carnival before in her hometown. After receiving a beautiful blue mask, she asks her mother about the carnival when her mother was a child, and learns about the drumming, dancing, dressing up and dreams of it. Her parents then go to the town meeting, and talk with the other people of the village, about hosting their own carnival in their town. Their town harvests sugarcane, and decides to do the carnival once the sugarcane harvest is done, to celebrate.
Cecille’s parents are excited, they are happy to share their cultures and focus on how they all come from different places, together, to harvest sugarcane and be apart of this town. This festival allowed the children of the town to learn about their parent’s home and culture, as well as empower the parents, who could be proud and loud about their culture in a very safe space of the carnival.
Like the previous book in this series, there is a Historical Information section at the end of Jump Up! – a timeline with real life pictures telling us all about the Caribbean Carnival and it’s start by slave traders, where the African slaves were not allowed to attend. However, when African slaves in Trinidad were freed, they started hosting their own European Carnival festivals in celebration of being free. This then spread to many other Caribbean islands and then cities around the world. This information section is really vital in helping my own learning as an adult and in helping our children continue to learn about different cultures and connect the book to real life.
It’s nice that there’s a historical element to this as well so you get to learn something as well. Diverse reading is so important for kids x
It really is, and it shows them that other people and cultures do exist and are valid.
I always read a bedtime story to my nieces and nephews before they go to sleep. We made it a daily routine. Those books look very interesting. I’ll check themot.
Aww that is so adorable and special.