Special Days Book Lists
I saw a suggestion the other day, (if I find it, I'll link it here) that was talking about making book lists based on holidays/national days/international days, etc. However, I decided to take it to a whole other level..... I'm currently writing out all of the holidays list on Days of The Year because my husband uses the site each morning to write on the board in his classroom. As a public school teacher, he wanted a site that would have special days not just related to religions. That said, I don't know the site's creators, so I don't know about updates or fixes they have throughout the year. They also do not have much variety religious holidays, which I would like to get more of that variety added. If you have an event you would like to submit to their site, go to their Submit An Event page. I will be submitting a few and hopefully they'll add some. Christmas Day is on the site, so I'm hoping they'll be adding more to be more inclusive. If you have a different site listing holidays that you would suggest, I would love to hear about it! At this point, I'll probably stick with Days Of The Year because it's currently maintained and updated, but I am open to suggestions if you know of something else. My goal is to update and make fixes once a year for the updated dates.
Why?!
Now, you could be thinking, WHY?! Why as a cisgender, white, Chirstianish, female, who is not an expert on ANY of these days, would you feel the need to do this? Well, to me, this is something I have found interesting and important, since I was little. I remember going to my public school in first grade, and being uncomfortable that there was a Christmas tree in the entryway. I knew that school was meant to be inclusive for all religions, and I knew not everyone celebrated Christmas. It bothered me that someone would feel excluded because they don't celebrate Christmas or celebrate something else. I wasn't fully aware that in rural Iowa, there weren't any people of other types of faith in my community at that time. It also bothered me to be at someone's house and see religious images because I worried they would make someone sad and feel bad that they weren't part of that person's faith or didn't go to church. I had learned about the Holocaust somewhere, and I didn't want to make a Jewish person sad and feel yet again excluded in my house/home/room. At the time, that was the only other religion I knew about, but I knew zero Jewish people. I just felt like anyone should feel comfortable in my home. My 'home' that I had control over as a first grader was just my bedroom. To me, things like that were for church. I'm still on the fence because I get that someone's home is a place for their own self expression.
Besides inclusion of others, I want my son to know about other people that are different from him, which starts with his parents learning more. He will grow up as a white male (unless he informs us otherwise). As my husband says, "we're [cis, white, men] celebrated enough." However, I think that there are still things in his life that he could grow up feeling "othered" by. Through this, I want to learn more about holidays, celebrations, people, experiences, I'm not knowledgeable about. There are also holidays and celebrations and national days about all sorts of things! A lot bring awareness to different things people could feel othered by (autism, ADHD, etc.). and also just fun things like corn dogs!
Also, the large variety of topics that will be covered guarantees I can have a lot of variety. I tend to hyperfocus on something for a while and then lose interest. This way, I am guaranteed a change in topic.
How?
My plan is to link each month below. Attached to each month will be another post with each celebration listed I find on there, and then link posts with book lists related to those celebration days on those posts. I realize this will take much more than a year, so I'll come back and edit the dates at the start of each year, since not all are based on a specific month and day.
What?
Depending on the topic, I plan on including at least one book suggestion related to the topic for: kids, nonfiction, and fiction. If you have book suggestions for a list, comment on that list, so people can see what else they could read connected with the celebration! I haven't found any topics that I am any sort of 'expert' on, so any suggestions other people have would be great! If there's not a list yet, email me at lemoncupcakelife@gmail.com, so I can check it out!
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
Personal Days:
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