CBP Partner Profile: Kids Like Us

This month we’re thrilled to highlight Kids Like Us, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that is dedicated to the literacy learning of children in city schools. They believe, as we do, in the importance of offering children outstanding books that reflect, value, and celebrate their lives. They promote books that celebrate city living, multicultural/multilingual communities, and positive images of urban culture, and on their extensive website, they recommend many Children’s Book Press titles which do just that. Click through to learn more.

Kids Like Us serves as a resource on quality multicultural literature to teachers and community educators.  Their volunteers research, review, and recommend books; they organize school and community literacy events; and they also provide a range of professional development services to urban schools, including guidance in building and utilizing outstanding classroom library collections to support students’ reading development.

Children’s Book Press is honored to have our books recognized by an organization like Kids Like Us. They took some time to answer a few questions for us about how they use our books. 

How do you use our books in your programs?

 Kids Like Us includes numerous Children’s Book Press titles in the book sets and collections that we recommend to teachers and community educators. In addition, a number of CBP authors and illustrators are featured in our favorite author and illustrator collections. All of our recommended books have been reviewed by teachers and community members and many are being “kid-tested” by students during this school year. Kids Like Us wants teachers to be able to count on us as a resource for only the highest-quality children’s literature selections. We want to be a go-to resource for urban public school teachers and community educators who are looking for the “best of the best” in urban children’s books that they can be assured will interest and engage their students.

 Why do you choose to highlight CBP's books?

 Children’s Book Press publishes exactly the type of high-quality multicultural and bilingual picture books we are looking for to help our students see themselves in texts and further develop their reading skills and their cultural identities. We are consistently impressed with the quality of Children’s Book Press selections, and although CBP books go through the same Kids Like Us review process as any others, we are always very confident that they will be recommended by teachers and students for our collection. We don’t know of any other publisher who does this work as well as you.

We also appreciate very much the publishing “risk” that CBP is willing to take with many of its titles. The bigger educational publishing giants are often so focused on wide, mainstream distribution and merchandising, that quality and cultural relevance get sacrificed. Without Children’s Book Press, we’re quite sure that books like Young Cornrows Callin’ Out the Moon or Quinito’s Neighborhood, which reflect and value our own students’ neighborhoods so well, or My Diary from Here to There which captures the bicultural experience and tensions that many of our students and families feel, would not likely be published. We thank you very much for this invaluable service that you provide.

The fact that CBP is a non-profit, independent publisher is also very appealing to us. Kids Like Us shares a similar mission with Children’s Book Press, and we’re very interested in continuing to support what Children’s Book Press does in whatever ways we can.

 Did our books help you meet your goals? How?

 Your books are definitely helping us educate pre-service and practicing teachers about high quality books that better reflect their students’ communities and experiences. For Kids Like Us, the real key is to examine the impact on these books in interesting and motivating children to read, and whether that in turn has a positive effect on their reading development. We are currently tracking the use of these books in a dozen or so teachers’ classrooms to see if students are more likely to select these types of texts for free reading than others. A few teachers are also having student “rate” some of these books. During the next school year, pending successful funding, we hope to examine more carefully whether including and utilizing these books in urban public school classroom libraries has an impact on students reading skills. In the short term, we can say without reservation that our teacher reviewers have responded very positively to Children’s Book Press selections, and we plan to continue to feature CBP titles in Kids Like Us collections.

Would you use Children’s Book Press books again?

 Absolutely! We plan to continue to explore what Children’s Book Press has to offer and regularly add titles to the Kids Like Us collection as we continue to grow.

Submitted by Childrens Book Press on Monday, May 4, 2009 4:56pm