Utilizing Culturally Sustaining Children’s Books as Curricula: The Antidote for Implicit Invisibility and Marginalizing Students

The Chapter Six focuses on the following questions – How can we cure the generational marginalization plaguing the educational arena? and How does it feel as a student to be an afterthought, a fleeting thought, or a superficial thought? How can valuable lessons from compelling stories and artwork be disseminated? The Author explores how culturally sustaining children’s books can also facilitate standards in other content areas (e.g., social studies and writing). As a result, a pivotal accountability action step requires key stakeholders (e.g., educational administrators, faculty, and staff) to veer off the path of least resistance and genuinely champion the on-going utilization of culturally sustaining children’s books as curricula to educate, embrace, validate, support, and advance the upward mobility of all students. The multifaceted effectiveness of culturally sustaining children’s books as curricula (K – 5) and demonstrated the productive antidote to eliminate implicit invisibility, “isms,” and other unfair practices of generational marginalization plaguing students in the educational arena; actively engage students in an impactful learning process for a wealth of multifaceted benefits such as increasing reading proficiencies like comprehension and vocabulary, countering aliteracy, and advancing other content areas like social studies; and nurture positive self-affirmations like self-love, self-worth, self-confidence and ingenuity and resilience as functional life skills.