Want to know where to find great children’s books featuring Black and Brown characters? Looking for new titles to add to your children’s bookshelves? Want some help on how to raise an avid reader? Here Wee Read is here for you. Here Wee Read is a website (with a great Instagram account, @hereweeread) that finds and reviews children’s books featuring diverse characters and gives parents great tips and advice on engaging children around reading.
Here Wee Read was created by Charnaie Gordon. Gordon, a computer programmer by day, is determined to raise her young son and daughter to be avid readers and wants to help all parents engage their families around books and reading. She has been blogging about books and offering parents reading tips and advice for more than three years. There are loads of great book recommendations on her site, including an impressive list of the “Books Every Black Child Should Read Before Age 10”. She has early access to many titles, so you will see books reviewed here before they hit the bookstore shelves. Her “Literary Road Trips” series describes family trips which either are directly book related or involve a stop at a bookstore or library.
You and your children will enjoy exploring Here Wee Read. After diving into the site and seeing several of their Instagram posts, I want to go out and fill my shelves with all of these great looking children’s books, even though my children are well beyond the ages for which these books are designed! Actually, it is worth exploring even if your children have outgrown these books, as you’ll find wonderful gift ideas for your friends with younger children. Kudos to Gordon for a great concept, very well executed.
Gordon and her children have also launched 50 Books for 50 States, a community service project which provides free new or gently used diverse books to underprivileged children or underfunded organizations in need across the United States. Visitors to this site can donate books or money (to help cover the cost of shipping books and purchasing new or gently used books), or they can sign up to be considered to receive book donations for their state. A wonderful project that you should definitely explore as well.