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Celebrate: Connections among Cultures by Jan Reynolds, 2006

Through photographs and well-designed text placement, Jan Reynolds demonstrates the common ways we celebrate. We gather together, we eat and drink, we play music, we dance, we use fire!

Children will recognize themselves dressed-up in Halloween costumes then admire the Inuit boy in a real wolf skin and the Sami girl in beautiful reindeer hide shoes. They will appreciate a view of a familiar birthday cake decorated with candles and then, connect the use of fire to burn a ceremonial mandala painting in a Tibetan celebration.

Reynolds examines Tibetans and Sherpas from the Himalaya, Aborigines in Australia, the Yanomami from the Amazon rain forest, the Balinese, the Tuareg of the Sahara, the Sami who live above the Artic Circle, and the Inuit! A well-designed map helps place these cultures on the globe. Her photographs are rich with color and life.

I usually do not like books that scream, "Buy me because I am multicultural!" as so often, they are preachy-teachy. Celebrate is just a terrific book and it rejoices in how similar the people of this planet are.