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March Resource Roundup
Children's Books, Discussion Prompts & Spring Action Guides for Kyriarchy-Smashing Families
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Significant Dates & Events in March
March Resources to keep ya smashin’ that kyriarchy
None of us can do it all – so pick one topic to introduce or revisit each month and pick one book to start a family discussion.
National Day of Unplugging
We are not social media users so much as social media products. Our attention (and by extension, our time), and our actions (likes, click-through patterns, etc.) are the product offered to the real customers – company advertisers.
We are the thing being sold. Our kids need support making informed decisions with screen use, which means helping them stay aware of the trade-offs of digital media. When we plug into screens, we get all kinds of benefits – accessibility, long-distance connection, education, entertainment. But there’s also a hidden cost that our generation wasn’t taught to account for – this stuff is designed to keep us dependent on the tech to the detriment of our health and relationships.
Sorta feels like the singularity is already here? To keep us clicking through, posting, and checking our notifications, we’ve got to stay in the shallows and keep consuming, sharing, and posting to prove we’re still relevant. The algorithms that keep us dependent leave us feeling burned out but unsatisfied, and we end up falling into a ditch of polarizing conspiracy theories.
Screens can be great! I just wish we had better digital literacy stories, and the whole thing was more transparent and protective for younger kids who fall into this stuff without consent.
When is it?
- Annually on March 5th
Read:
Watch
- How screens may affect a kid’s brain development (best for ages 7+)
- Screen time: how much is too much? (best for ages 9+)
Discuss: How do we use screens?
- How much of our awake time is spent on screens?
- Which screen use helps us?
- Which hurts?
- Which are a mix?
Discuss: How apps are designed to keep us hooked
Which human vulnerabilities do our favorite apps take advantage of? Signs kids can watch out for:
- Variable rewards (the slot machine effect): When the chance of a reward gets us excited to stick around and try again.
- The need to be seen: How does this app give us the illusion that we’re being better understood by others?
- The need to connect: How does this app give us shallow ways to connect with others, but distract us from spending deep quality time and attention with people we care about?
- The need to reciprocate: When do we feel like we have to respond, click, or take an action to be polite?
- The fear of missing out: If we unplugged for a day or a week, what are we worried we’ll miss out on? What are we worried could happen?
- The compulsion to compare: When are we watching others to measure ourselves against them?
- The need for distraction: How are we feeling right before we pick up our screens? Are we feeling bored, tired, anxious, or some other discomfort that we’re avoiding processing in a healthier way?
Discuss: When unplugging isn’t about accessibility, but dependency:
- What things can we get from screens that we can’t get from outside?
- What things can we get from outside that we can’t get from screens?
- Why do we need to balance outside time with screen time?
More resources to dig deeper:
- Dismantling the Attention Economy: Kids Stories on Unplugging
- Stories for a nature-based classroom
- Post-Consumerism Stories For Kids
- Inclusive Kids Books About STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics
- For adults: Living with the Bear (article)
International Women’s Day & Women’s History Month
Let’s talk about valuing care work and recognizing emotional labor!
When is it?
- Women’s Day falls annually on March 8th
- Women’s History Month lasts through March
Read
- Sharice’s Big Voice (Ages 4+)
- Seeds of Change (ages 5+)
- I Dissent (ages 4+)
- Queen of Physics (ages 5+)
- All The Way To The Top (ages 4+)
- For the Right to Learn (ages 6+)
- Sylvia and Marsha Start a Revolution (ages 4-8)
- Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life (ages 5+)
- Shaped by Her Hands (ages 4+)
Discuss:
I know you’re shaking your head being like ‘I can’t discuss the wage gap and the mental load with kids, it’s too complicated!’ But we did it with the 6 & 8yo – and the Earthquakes loved it, but also these little dudes were furious on all women’s behalf,* and then they brought me coffee in bed for a whole week. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, LADIES.
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- Discuss with kids: what does it mean to work? How does our society value types of work differently? How can we tell? (Ex: who is expected to work more hours, for less wages? Which careers are held in high esteem? Which jobs treat the worker as the authority, and which treat the customer as the authority?)
- Why does our culture push back against paying for domestic labor, childcare, and community-support work?
- Why does our culture push back against paying targeted people for self-advocate work?
- Read You Should Have Asked together with older kids (8+) What is mental labor? What is invisible labor?
- What resources do families need in order to make working outside the home a choice? What resources might families not have access to, which would take away that choice?
Take Action: Girls & women deserve more than bland biographies:
Books about girls are not just for girls. Does your bookshelf pass the Uhura test?
Check your bookshelf: If 50% of your characters are not representing complex girls, women, and folks of all marginalized genders – why?
If most of your books featuring feminine protagonists are just anthropomorphic animals, polite white girls, sassy Black & brown girls written by white authors, and two-dimensional manic pixie girl-power ::sigh:: or not like the other girls biographies ::ugh:: – time to balance things out! Not everything about women has to be about smashing glass ceilings – let’s get more girls of color having fun and doing adventure on those bookshelves!
More resources to dig deeper:
- What do ALL feminists have in common? A flap book for our youngest activists
- Kids Books About Women’s History: Most of these stories are fine. A few of them are great. A lot of them are very boring. But all of them are the best ones I could find about each woman. I’ll be swapping out the more boring ones if/when someone publishes a better story.
- Children’s Books by Black Women & Femmes
- No White Saviors: Kids Books About Black Women in US History
- How inspiration porn humiliates women in ‘The Truly Brave Princesses’
- Stories featuring Unapologetically Kickass Girls
- Ending the erasure of women of color with Milo’s Museum
National Panda Day
When is it?
- Annually on March 16th
Pandas are freaking adorable beyond earthy reason and also they are perfect in every way (so long as you’re not the person in charge of cleaning up after them – or convincing them to bang for the survival of the species.) We moral beings do not deserve the goodness of pandas. Unworthy!
Naturally, creatures this adorable and perfect are perfect fodder for kids books. The problem is that many of these books are adorably racist. Authors and illustrators (and many Asian makers even!) veil orientalism and Asian stereotypes with racially-coded panda characters. I call this panda-coding. And it is problematic. Adorable, but harmful. Adorably problematic. Pandafully Prandlamatic.
Even some of the books we love – Zen Socks, That’s Not How You Do It – rely on lazy racial coding to profit off the ‘Magic Asian,‘ the ‘Perpetual Foreigner,‘ or even so-called ‘positive stereotypes‘ that Asians are harmless dopey sidekicks – all to reinforce soft stigma of East Asians as the other. Western, European behavior & characters are the Normal Every-man Protagonist, be they humans or just more globally common animals like cats.
Even Asian American authors pull this nonsense. Look at Chee-Kee, a reductive pan-Asian mishmash, xenophobia-apologizing narrative reinforcing the model minority & melting-pot myths. Don’t even get me started on the bizarre panda-coded San Franciscan Magic Chopstick Asian nonsense of Hats off to Mr. Pockles! What is this white nonsense.
This isn’t to say you can’t acknowledge that Pandas are a significant, celebratory part of Chinese culture (Goldy Luck does this well – see, Asians can be human characters, too!) It’s only when we start objectifying and dehumanizing Asian folks as animals for the white gaze where this gets awkward.
So we love pandas. We love books about pandas. And we even love some problematic books about Asian people that code us as pandas but are the literary equivalent to saying “I think you and your culture are so fascinating, it’s a compliment!” in a creepy, objectifying, stereotypey Jon J, Muth-kinda way (please stop saying things like this!)
Once you start noticing how folks love making stories about us, in panda-face, it starts getting weird and kind of ruins it for everybody. So with that, here’s a list of our favorite books featuring pandas that aren’t just excuses to promote Asian stereotypes in panda-face.
Panda Stories That DO NOT Panda-Code Asians as Perpetual Foreigners (Isn’t it just pathetic that this has to be a curated list? And that it’s such a short list?)
[Video: A video of me trying to clean up my kids toys and laundry every day. Except in this video, my kids are pandas and I am their nanny keeper. Panda Cubs Vs. Panda Nanny Showdown Cleanup Battle. It makes me feel seen.]
International Day of Forests
When is National Forest Day?
Plus a few more opportunities to celebrate trees.
- International day of Forests falls annually on March 21st
- Johnny Appleseed day falls annually on March 11th
- Arbor day is April 29
- Tu B’Shevat falls on the 15th day of the Hebrew lunisolar calendar, which falls in January-February for the next few years
Read:
- Johnny Slimeseed (ages 8-11)
- Tree Lady (ages 5+)
- 111 Trees (ages 5-8)
- Seeds of Change
- All those books about George Washington Carver
Discuss: The impact of settler-colonist agriculture on native bio-regions.
- Read Johnny Slimeseed
- How did Appleseed’s work affect the safety and health of folks with new access to apples?
(Bacteria has a harder time growing in cider than standing water.) - What is a conservationist?
Appleseed spread bitter, ‘spitter’ apples (not the sweet snackin’ kind) across a wide swath of eastern Turtle Island. Probably (hopefully!) crab-apples, which are native to the area. This is NOT the same as the non-native sweet varieties we buy in grocery stores today.
- How did Appleseed’s work affect the safety and health of folks with new access to apples?
- Read Miss Rumphius
- How do the objectives of Appleseed & Rumphius differ?
(Rumphius introduced invasive flowers for her own entertainment and colonized a whole damn ecosystem!) - How has environmental colonization impacted our area? Think of wildlife, Indigenous culture, and climate.
- How do the objectives of Appleseed & Rumphius differ?
Take Action This Spring
- Find out common endangered and invasive plants local to you using a quick google search.
- Commit to plant responsibly in relationship within bio-region, not just our personal diets and aesthetic preferences.
- Identify one invasive species your family can commit to pulling when out and about.
- Plant one native plant that supports native insects, wildlife, water, and lifeways.
- Switch your default search engine to Ecosia to plant trees while you search ‘how to get my kid to stop whining’ for the 10,001th time.
More resources to dig deeper:
Intersection of animal rights and habitat loss
Obvs, you’re gonna raise your kids to recognize and call in racially coded animal characters. That won’t be hard. But bringing it back to tangible things we can do as families, it’s pretty easy to spin love of animals into concern for them and raise enthusiastic animal rights activists.
If the kids are getting upset about environmental colonization and the lack of pandas in the world (as they should be), let’s redirect all that despair over endangered animals into productive action!
There are many very boring books about animal rights. These are not those. These are the interesting ones that engage kids and get them fired up about the connection between habitat conservation, animal rights, and environmentalism.
Read
- Aquicorn Cove (it’s the ocean – but the ocean is a forest for coral!)
- A Boy and A Jaguar (try not to cry!)
- The Lumberjack’s Beard (redemptive!)
- Spring After Spring (oh, so that’s why Rachel Carson was a big deal!)
- What if Sharks Disappeared (alarming!)
- The Lady and the Spider (riveting!)
- Sea Bear (age-appropriately devastating and a little stressful!)
- Tokyo Digs A Garden (pro-apocalyptic!)
- Science Comics: Trees, Kings of the Forest (hilarious!)
Discuss:
- Talk with kids about the importance of not just protecting giant pandas from extinction, but also the importance of protecting their entire species ecosystem.
- Turns out prioritizing pandas ’cause of their cuteness is a band-aid fix – one that ultimately harms the entire ecosystem they live in. If kids have a hard time grasping why we need to rescue the Asiatic Black Bear to save pandas, read If Sharks Disappeared to give them a sense of how all species are interdependent on each other.
- Aaaand bringing it back around – we’re only a short hop into revisiting our discussions from International Women’s Day above. Discuss how over-representation of white American women’s stories during Women’s History Month erases and dismisses the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and women of color around the world.
See what we did that? Talking with kids is fun!
Take Action
- Research an at-risk animal or bug local to you.
- Find out what you can do to reduce and rebuild to support animals endangered by habitat loss, pollution, and general human asshattery.
More resources to dig deeper:
- Panda Stories That DO NOT Panda-Code Asians as Perpetual Foreigners (Isn’t it just pathetic that this has to be a curated list? And that it’s such a short list?)
- Normalizing (not tokenizing!) Asian & Pacific Islander Characters in Kidlit
- #OwnVoices Asian & Pacific Islander Kidlit
- #OwnVoices Chinese American Kids Stories
- Inspiring Kids To Learn About Animal Rights & Anti-Speciesism
St. Paddy’s Day & Irish American Heritage Month
When is it?
- St. Paddy’s is celebrated annually on March 17th
- Irish American Heritage Month lasts through March
Read:
Watch
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- What religions and faiths did Irish ancestors practice before colonization & the conversion led by St. Patrick?
Discuss:
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- What does it mean to have the gift of blarney?
- If we have the gift of blarney – when is it okay to use? When is it not okay?
Moving on from panda stereotypes, now let’s talk about the leprechaun-coding that oppresses Irish Americans.
Hahah, just kidding – that is not a thing!!! There is no spectrum of disrespect where leprechaun jokes lead to hate crimes and discrimination against Irish Americans. So let’s celebrate our Irish American heritage and learn the history of where we come from while also acknowledging Irish Americans are not being attacked on the streets for our ethnicity. Nor passed by for employment, housing, leadership positions, or any of the other tiny little indignities that come with being seen as a perpetual foreigner.
Power matters when we’re talking about stereotypes and bias. Other than this one weird book where an Irish guy was depicted as a little too leprechaun-y for my tastes, Irish Americans aren’t broadly stereotyped and dehumanized in kidlit as a general rule.
ONE BOOK. I have found ONE BOOK that very subtly makes fun of Irish folks. IN A PUBLISHING SEA OF BIGOTRY AND WHITEWASHING.
I know we have jokes about alcoholism (thanks, generational trauma from colonization that still destroys families today!) and politicians who feel entitled to votes due to Kennedy blood quantum – BUT, none of that shows up in kidlit or even adult media in the way, say, slant-eyes, rice paddy hats, and kung-flu jokes do.
So with that, let’s revisit our annual St. Paddy’s call for Irish Americans to stop being hypocrites, read up about our history, and step up in solidarity with modern immigrants. Given how much we still bellyache about getting colonized and ejected from Ireland doesn’t mean we get to slam the door behind us and screw everyone else over.
Irish-American family: Talk with your kids about our history, but acknowledge that we’re past the worst of it. What responsibilities do we have as settlers to decolonize here in the US?
Post it where your ‘whatabout-racism-against-the-Irish‘ cousin who still believes reverse-racism is a thing can find it.
More resources to dig deeper:
- Endurance, Tenacity and Wits – Irish American Kids Stories for St. Paddy’s Day
- Irish American Kids Stories – While I do love a good decolonizing accomplice story (Wolfwalkers!!) – you would be amazed how many book makers lump Indigenous Irish stories with stories of their colonizers as ‘Traditional Irish Mythology,’ (no!) so trying to decolonize our list of Irish & Irish American stories is a task.
- For older kids (8+) learn how the Irish became ‘white’: How America Invented Race.
- #FamilyMovieNight discussion: Wolfwalkers( Support Raising Luminaries at the Luminary+ tier to get access to the Luminary Brain Trust)
- An Animated history of Ireland (best for older teens)
Spring Equinox
When is it?
- Usually occurs annually around March 19-21
More resources to dig deeper:
“I’m a neurodivergent person working in libraries. Your work has been such a wonderful resource. I’m not a parent (yet) but your blog posts make me think about how I can incorporate everything into my work.”
Sarah M.
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Monthly Explorations for March…
As we discuss the topics above, we tie them into deeper discussions throughout the month about embracing anger and weaponizing it for do-goodery, plus what it means to be an accomplice and conspirator working in solidarity with others.
Let’s explore healthy anger
Anger is a sign we’ve created higher expectations!
March is just the perfect month to get riled up and angry. And you know what? The perfect way to get angry is to read about all the bullshit women have had to put up with from their own families over the last few thousand years.
So during March, instead of focusing on women specifically – we focus on accepting and using healthy anger in a society that condones violent aggerssion from men, and yet weaponizes a woman’s rightgeous anger against her.
My kids are both masculine-leaning, and one of the best things we can do when raising boys is to teach them that women have a right to own their experiences and emotions. That way, when my kiddos find themselves compelled to brush off a woman’s concerns, they can check themselves, recognize her concerns, and be better accomplices.
Read:
- Mary Wears What She Wants (ages 4-8)
- When I Was Eight (ages 6+)
- Lucía the Luchadora (ages 3-7)
Watch
- Something Really Ought To Be Done About Little Miss Bossy (video analysis, maybe don’t watch with kids, I tend to cuss a lot)
Take action: SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WOMEN’S SHELTER
Not sure which shelter to support? Join us – I direct $15 of our membership contributions to Rosie’s Place, a sanctuary for women experiencing or at-risk for homelessness. Comment below to boost your favorite organization supporting housing insecure women and mothers.
More Resources to dig deeper:
- When you feel my teeth pierce your jugular: When women embrace anger
- How to handle tantrums: Books that explore big emotions and redirect harmful behavior.
- Who has the right to get angry? Talking with kids about entitlement & privilege.
- Destigmatizing Anger in Women unpolished book list. Here’s a quick and messy infodump of assumptions we need to dismantle when it comes to anger in women. Also a list of stories where righteously angry women and girls transform their anger into good trouble.
- Keeping Women In The Kitchen with ‘Jimmy Zangwow’
What does it mean to be an accomplice?
Allyship is not just for white folks, we work on this all year, for all targeted identities.
Are your kids equipped with the tools they need to be upstanders, accomplices, and supportive friends? Do they know the difference between saviorism and solidarity? Do they know when to listen, when to pass the mic, and when to weaponize unearned privilege to dismantle the kyriarchy?
Quick reference from our word bank:
- An ally is a person who believes you deserve equality.
- An accomplice is a person who actively works alongside you to end injustice and harm against you.
- A conspirator is someone you work together with to end unfair rules that harm both of you.
Take Action
- For Adults: Check out: Hollaback’s Free Bystander Intervention Training
- Actions for kids below
Resources to dig deeper:
- Kids Books on how to model Solidarity as Allies & Accomplices
- Kids Books About Collective Action (and even more stories of Collective Action)
- Children’s Books for Upstanders: Civil Disobedience & Disrupting Injustice
- Captivating Kids Stories to Recognize Privilege
- Stop Lying To Your Kids – Teaching Kids About White Supremacy
- Books For The Next Generation Of Kind & Brilliant Leaders
- Stories of Nonviolent Resistance For Kids
- Kids Books About Restorative Justice
- Read Intersectionallies if you must, but if you do, discuss with your kids how even those of us who strive for intersectional representation can be blatantly ageist. Why is everyone all gushing over this book? Kids don’t deserve this. Set a higher bar!
- Actually you know what’s a way better book to discuss the challenges of being multiply-targeted? Sign Up Here. (That’s not a command, it’s the name of the book.)
- Unpacking the white savior with the Neverending story and how not to be an ally with Neverending story II (#FamilyMovieNight fun for Luminary+ Members)
Gift a Little Feminist Book Club subscription for the teacher in your life who could use some women’s history biographies.
March Calls Us To Action:
Learn the fifth ‘D’ of Bystander Intervention for Kids: DIRECT
Courtesy of our friends at Hollaback, the AAJC & Woori Show.
Adults, get in-depth training!
Register for a free virtual Bystander Intervention Training to end gender-based harassment on the street or in your workplace with Hollaback.
Action for Kids: Reach out to an educator for International Working Womens Day
Join Revolutionary Humans 25 Actions of Kindness.
Given the disproportionate amount of women in early-childhood education (and how under-appreciated and under-paid they are for it), this would be a great time to email an educator who has been struggling to meet the impossible demands of pandemic education to let them know you see how hard they’re working – and how much you appreciate it.
Revolutionary Humans is Black-owned, woman-owned, single-mom-owned & founded by educator Bellamy Shoffner. Supporting her work is a great way to say thank-you.
[Image& text via Bellamy of Revolutionary Humans: “Kindness as an action. 25 ways to make an impact. Email an educator and tell them why they’re great!” Via RevolutionaryHumans.com]
> Support Bellamy’s work here. <
Action for Grownups: Contact your senator to vote YES on the Women’s Health Protection Act
I know, I know. Abortion isn’t a ‘women’s issue’ and the title of this act excludes trans men and nonbinary folks. Let’s focus, this is urgent.
“We demand that young people have the explicit legal right to consent to their own sexual and reproductive health care needs with full protection for their privacy and confidentiality and that young people have full access to the reproductive health services they may need, including but not limited to abortion, birth control, and comprehensive sex education that is sex-positive and LGBTQIA+ affirming”
Do one of these tasks now (3-5 minutes)
- Read & co-sign demands from Abortion WithinReach.
- Contact your senator however works for you
- Call: script & call plan from Planned Parenthood,
- Text: SIGN PMQRWU to 50409 or click here for our short & simple resistbot script.
- NORMALIZE healthcare support! Share one of these resources on social media.
- Donate if you can to Abortion WithinReach or Planned Parenthood.
Test the keyword LUMINARIES to 50409 (Resistbot) to view all Raising Luminaries petitions.
You are doing a good job!
We support those who support our community. I’m reinvesting a minimum of 11% of our 2022 Patreon pledges to activists and organizations such as Rosie’s Place, Revolutionary Humans, and Abortion Within Reach.
Ways to support: Paypal | Venmo | Ko-fi | Buy a t-shirt | Buy a book | Buy toothpaste | Subscribe to Little Feminist Book Club
Good Finds for March
Welcome to our favorite good finds! You can keep track of great new finds as we add them to the in-progress best books of 2022 (okay there’s only one book there right now but gimmie a minute) as well as our Spring Favorites.
One more good thing…
The Earthquakes created lion costumes & attended virtual lion dancing lesson with Nüwa Athletic Club & Pao Arts Center for the new year. It was all going smoothly until they decided the only part they cared for was chucking orange peels at me and undercover snacking.
This was the only documentation I got of the event before they decided to claim my phone as an offering.
[Video description: R2 and Q dance…ungracefully with DIY lion head costumes for the new year.]
Stay Curious, Stand Brave & Become Dangerous
You are amazing and maaagic. I appreciate the fact that you’re on this planet, raising awesome kiddos and leading this next generation of kind, clever and generous leaders.
If my work makes it easier for you to raise kind & courageous kiddos, you can keep these resources free for everybody by sharing this post with your friends and supporting my work directly.
Ways to support: Paypal | Venmo | Ko-fi | Buy a t-shirt | Buy a book | Buy toothpaste | Subscribe to Little Feminist Book Club
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