  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 03/01/2021 Martin, Sally, Pedro, Nick, and Yulee look forward to their class’s Heritage Festival, where their families will bring foods representative of their Japanese, Indian, Haidan, Brazilian, Norwegian, and Egyptian cultures. Martin takes his cousin Taeko, who has just arrived from Japan, to meet Sally. All three stop to collect Pedro, Nick, and Yulee from their homes, before joining their families at the outdoor festival, where they share ethnic foods and talk about items related to their roots. The most effective pages are those set in the kids’ homes, where they learn about their friends’ foods and traditions. The colorful digital illustrations are bustling with activity. While plenty of books show diverse characters, few take on the topic of cultural diversity in such a straightforward way. It’s particularly effective here because the five friends in Ritchie’s Exploring Our Communities series are familiar faces to many children. An appended activity page encourages kids to ask about their ancestry and collect stories, recipes, and a family tree for a “Heritage Box.” An appealing introduction to cultural differences. - Copyright 2021 Booklist. Loading...
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