winter holidays – Page 2

This is part of a series on writing booklists about holidays beyond Christmas. To read more about it, you can see it here.

Welcome to our list of favorite Diwali books! This holiday was a favorite of mine to research because of the colors involved with Diwali, making the illustrations in every book so fun! Here are my top four:

Festival of Colors by Kabir and Surishtha Sehgal

I love how this book is simple and on a child’s level, while still incorporating the Diwali jargon and vocabulary. It is also very inclusive of multiple races, showing that Diwali can be enjoyed by many!

Lots of LIghts: A Story About Diwali by Kavita Sahai

This one is fun because elephants are the main characters that walk kids through what Diwali is, again, on their level.

Rani Saves Diwali by Anita Badhwar

A princess saving Diwali! Such a fun book with cute illustrations.

Binny’s Diwali by Thrity Umrigar

Binny is trying to tell her class about her favorite holiday, Diwali. And her peers love it!

What other Diwali books do you love reading to your class? How do you observe Diwali in your classroom or school?

Friends, I’ve written a lot of posts about Christmas picture books, but there are many, many people who don’t celebrate Christmas and have a different holiday they observe. And while finding book lists for Christmas is easy, it’s a little more difficult to find picture books for other holiday celebrations such as Hannauka or Diwali. So over the next few weeks, I’ll be blasting you with book list after book list for these other holidays.

I’ll be covering
Diwali
Hanukkah
Las Posadas
Chinese New Year
Winter Solstice
Kwanzaa
Three Kings Day

Typically, I don’t like to recommend books unless I’ve held them in the flesh or even on an eReader and read every page to know if it’s something I really want to share with friends. However, our little, local library has limited access to some of these holiday books. I made a friendly suggestion to our children’s librarian that we should add some of these new titles and she agreed and promised to do what she could!

Because of this, I have had to get creative and watch read alouds on YouTube or do research on Goodreads on some of these picture books to make sure it is something I truly want to recommend to you.

Another great resource I have found is this free printable of different holidays with QR codes to scan that you can share with your students to learn more about each holiday.

So happy holidays and stay tuned for lots and lots of books that will help you teach your students about multiple holidays, not just Christmas!

Tag: winter holidays

A Picture Book List For Diwali

Merry Christmas! But What About Other Holidays? We Need More Picture Book Representation