Kids4 is a Minneapolis based organization with a passion for – Local Love, Local Literacy and Local Service Learning. Read below to learn more about you can take part in their mission!
My five-year-old and I love working our way through a giant stack of library books. We nest on the couch, letting the books pile around us as we browse through the pictures before selecting the ones we want to read first. Often it’s Spiderman or books about Legos that make the top of the stack, but a fair share of animal adventures and kid misadventures are also winners. Recently, he flipped through a book and quickly set it down saying, “Not that one.” “Why not?” I asked. “There aren’t any kids like me in that book,” he replied.
As he looked through another book, I skimmed the rejected one feeling confused. There were lots of kids in the pictures, and they were doing activities he also does and enjoys. What could he mean? It jumped out at me with sudden clarity: there were no white boys in this book.
At just five, my white child already assumes that he will be represented in any media he encounters. And this assumption is based on fact–he usually is, and often it isn’t as a side character but as the hero of the story. Even though a lot of progress has been made in publishing, white privilege and white perspective in children’s literature is alive and well.
When my friend Lex and I first envisioned Kids4, we hoped to create an experience for our kids to connect and grow through children’s literature. Her kids, as children of color, needed good books that represented them as heroes, thinkers, and story makers. My kid, as a white child, needed good books that decentered him, drew him into non-white experiences, and challenged his privilege. All our kids needed opportunities to shine, play, create, and serve. All our kids needed to meet diverse local authors, illustrators, and activists. All our kids needed to feel important and celebrated. So we got to work. With the help of our friend Jodi, an experienced educator, our values and vision further emerged, and Kids4 took shape as a community of kids and families committed to diversity work through connections with local authors and community service learning. Our group’s name, Kids4, is a commitment to four important words that all start with the letter “L”: local love, literacy & learning.
As we have researched and read, we have discovered an incredible community of authors and artists of color right here, in the Twin Cities. They are doing the work of inspiration and equity, and we have been so blessed to meet and partner with them throughout last year. Our local authors are fantastic, like five-year-old Harper Bonneur from Plymouth who writes about loving your body and came to do her “I love my naked” song for our kids, or Mélina Mangal, a local librarian, who read her book Jayden’s Impossible Garden and answered questions about community gardens, and then there was Sarah Warren from Minneapolis whose hero Dolores Huerta helped us think of ways we can be heroes for others, and finally, Kao Kalia Yang who told us about her grandmother and the magical tigers in the jungles of Laos from her house in St. Paul. Inspired by our authors’ stories, our kids have worked together to donate grocery bags to food shelves, plant flowers for the George Floyd Memorial, collect supplies for refugees, and create gift/supply bags for those who are homeless. Our kids are on a roll!
We invite you to join us. This year, we have picked out eight books by local authors that will be purchased from local bookstores. Each season (winter, spring, summer, fall), we will send out a couple books and a kid-friendly activity booklet with ideas for engaging your family in equity work. We are creating meeting opportunities with our authors and with other community activists for our kids. For now these gatherings will be virtual, and when the weather is better there will be in-person opportunities.
While I’m a firm believer in children’s books being enjoyed by people of all ages, most of our participants are ages 3-12. The cost for the year is $140 (includes shipping) which goes entirely to our authors, activists, and local bookstores. You can register via this form and learn more about our past projects on our website.
