Come Together, Change the World: A Sesame Street ® Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice

by Jackie Golusky

Overview

What can you do to stand up for racial kindness?

Elmo and friends learn along with young readers about racial justice. Inspired by CNN and Sesame Street's Town Hall, Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism, this gentle guide helps kids celebrate what makes them special, use words to talk about race, and understand why it is important to treat everyone fairly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728431437
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.75(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.13(d)
Lexile:	AD540L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Jackie Golusky is a writer and editor from Saint Paul, Minnesota. She received her degree in Creative Writing from Hamline University.

Editorial Reviews

"[E]xamples of concrete actions children can take to stand up for themselves and others create a strong foundation and make this a useful primer for community building . . ."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2021-06-16
Sesame Street’s introduction to being an upstander against racism.

Photos of Sesame Street characters and diverse children illustrate clear, earnest text that offers definitions of terms like racism, racial justice, and upstander. The concepts of fairness and unfairness do the heavy lifting in the definitions offered: “Being treated unfairly because of your race or where you are from is called racism.” (Race goes without an attempt at a definition.) The text goes on to lay out practical steps that children can take to express their feelings if they feel targeted by racism and to intervene if they see someone else being targeted. Bullying, hostility, and violence are absent from the photographs, which instead focus on children looking concerned or pensive or playing happily together. While it is undeniably difficult to tackle systemic racism in a picture book for young children, this effort unfortunately ends up reducing racism to individual acts of unfairness or meanness in its examples. It also presumes that trusted adults will support children who share their hurts or seek support as upstanders. Ideally, adults will come through for children who experience or resist racism, but this, of course, isn’t a sure outcome. While the television show has successfully tackled difficult topics, this book is too abbreviated to get this particular job done.

Doesn’t truly come together in the service of its message. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews

11/01/2021

PreS-Gr 2—Elmo and friends introduce the concepts of fairness and racial justice to a very young audience. Elmo begins by highlighting the importance of diversity and presenting skin color as a quality that makes each person unique and special. Though race itself is not explicitly defined, a clunky transition to the concept defines racism as "being treated unfairly because of your race or where you are from." No examples of unfair treatment are given. Listening to friends' feelings and talking with a trusted adult are laid out as ways to address unfairness, with the ultimate goal of making the world a better place. These examples of concrete actions children can take to stand up for themselves and others create a strong foundation and make this a useful primer for community building, though the connection to racism and racial justice is disjointed. Photos of Sesame Street characters and a diverse cast of young children are overlaid onto backdrops of bright colors and shapes, making for an eye-catching, positive read, despite flaws. VERDICT Purchase where needed, but don't expect the Sesame Street crew to adequately address the complex topics here.—Allison Staley, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

School Library Journal