Monte and Mabel’s greatest Christmas wish is to spend some quality time with Santa Claus, and they get the surprise of a lifetime when his sleigh breaks down right in their yard during his last delivery! The excitement is evident, Santa will be their guest while he awaits the necessary spare parts! It feels like a dream come true... but perhaps there’s more to this story.
As it turns out, Santa is quite the unconventional houseguest, enjoying late-night rock music and even sipping spaghetti sauce straight from the jar! However, when he accidentally tinkers with Dad’s motorcycle and Mabel’s tablet, the family starts to wonder, how do you kindly ask Santa to leave? This festive adventure leads to unexpected lessons about hospitality, friendship, and the true spirit of Christmas!
Young Diverse Readers (YDR) is a Latina-owned small business specializing in professional development training and personalized consulting services. Its commitment is to foster inclusive and supportive organizational environments where historically marginalized youth can successfully be recognized, respected, and empowered through literature.
VISION
Our vision is to create opportunities that showcase cultural awareness, acceptance, and understanding. Overall, giving each child and teen a voice through literature that reflects their multicultural world and creates a climate of inclusiveness by seeing human connections where all feel genuinely valued and respected in a culturally pluralistic world.
MISSION
Our mission is to remove Brown and Black disparities from youth curriculums, programs, and services by providing diverse expertise, implementing complimentary support within organizations, and successfully training paraprofessionals and professionals through tailored training and one-on-one consulting.
BACKGROUND
Children and teen literature are primary conduits for relaying messages to youth via shared readings, storytimes, read-alouds, reading assignments, and more.
From utero, each child begins to hear their immediate world, and by 3 months, they develop a better handle of what is being read to them. At six years old, children use pictures and context to decipher unfamiliar words. While celebrating their ninth-year milestone, grade school children start analyzing texts for meaning, graduating to analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating ideas from the text by high school.
However, there is a lack of diverse and inclusive representation in children and teen literature. Publishing companies often focus on releasing predominantly white, female, heterosexual, and non-disabled characters in youth literature. Thus, displaying the need for advocacy and diverse, equitable, and inclusive representation in books and literary formats for youth readers.
https://www.understood.org/en/articles/reading-skills-what-to-expect-at-different-ages?_sp=17c3c568-2beb-4d3a-be34-089caec77225.1653509624294#Babies_(ages_0%E2%80%9312_months)https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-and-or-about-poc-2018/