Celebrating the wealth of quality multicultural literature recently published for children and young adults, this valuable resource examines the fiction, oral tradition, and poetry from four major ethnic groups in the United States. Each of these genres is considered in turn for the literature dealing with African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native-American Indians. Taking up where their earlier volume This Land is Our Land left off, Helbig and Perkins have teamed up once again to identify and expertly evaluate more than 500 multicultural books published from 1994 through 1999. Both considered authorities in the field of children's literature, the two of them personally selected, read, and evaluated all the books included here. Their insightful annotations help readers carefully consider both literary standards such as plot development, characterization, and style, as well as cultural values as they are represented in these cited works. Each entry also indicates the suggested age and grade level appropriateness of the work.
With the proliferation and ever increasing popularity of multicultural literature for children and young adults, this sensitively written volume will serve as an invaluable collection development tool. Teachers, as well as librarians, will find the comprehensiveness and organization of this bibliography helpful as a guide in selecting appropriate materials for classroom use. Even students will find this book easy to use, with its five indexes identifying works by title, writer, illustrator, grade level, and subject. Public libraries and school media centers will find much use for Many Peoples, One Land.
About the Author: ALETHEA K. HELBIG, Professor, and AGNES REGAN PERKINS, Professor Emeritus, both of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University. Helbig and Perkins are co-authors of This Land is Our Land: A Guide to Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood 1994) and Myths and Hero Tales: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood 1997). They have written a series of encyclopedic works on fiction for children including Dictionary of British Children's Fiction (Greenwood 1989), Dictionary of Children's Fiction from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and Selected African Countries (Greenwood 1992) and Dictionary of American Children's Fiction (Greenwood 1996), for which they are currently working on the third supplement. Helbig is also author of Nanabozhoo: Giver of Life. She is a past president of the Children's Literature Association.
