EDS 308: Finding Online Multicultural Books: Home

Here are some tips to help you find your online books in order to do your analysis assignment of multicultural children's picture books.

Each of the multicultural groups assigned have a separate box below. You will find YouTube videos of several books that represent the multicultural group. 

Bear in mind that we recently went through exceptional times. Schools and libraries were closed to the public for health and safety regulations starting in March 2020. This meant that access to picture books was extremely challenging. As a result, in the name of literacy attempts, YouTube was flooded with uploads of picture book read-alouds for homeschooling.

Unfortunately, uploading these kinds of videos without strict permission from the publisher, which applies even for the author, breaks copyright law. Many of these picture book read-aloud videos were therefore not lawful. As long as they're available, you will come to no harm in watching them. Just beware if you intended to upload one yourself.

The process of finding a read-aloud online of any picture book is straight forward. The best way is to start with a title.

1. Simply type in the title using your preferred browser, and go to the video results. If there has been one uploaded, you'll find it. You may even find several versions of different people reading it. Some people get fancy with effects, others make sure you can see the words on the page, etc. You'll have to click around to find one that you like. This is how this selection that you find below was done. 

How do you find titles? 

1. Go to the children's book awards and choose a title. It's as simple as that. You can refer to this other UWL guide on children's book awards, which has direct links to all of the awards, in alphabetical order.
2. Browse the list of awards. You'll be able to tell either by the award title or the brief description if the award applies to your multicultural group.
3. Follow the instructions on the guide. It's simple. Every award has a homepage with a list of current and past award titles.
   1. Pick a title.
   2. Copy/paste it into your browser search box.
   3. Click on videos. If it hasn't been recorded and uploaded by some individual or school or teacher or librarian, then choose another title. 
   4. To know more about how to evaluate a children's book, there are many tips on another UWL guide. 

Once you have a title that is on YouTube, notice that in the suggested videos on the right hand side, other books will pop up. Often they have the same theme or multicultural focus. Follow your instincts! 

Searching in this way can turn up fabulous results, and sometimes it's the wild wild west. Give it a try and let me know if you have tips to share, success stories, or other concerns and questions. 

Teri Holford, Education Liaison Librarian (tholford@uwlax.edu)