We've been celebrating the holidays in a big way here in the elementary library. Last weeks focus was on Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa is an annual celebration that honors African-American culture. It is celebrated for 7 days and ends with a feast, called Karamu where families come together to eat, dance and exchange gifts, also known as Zawadi. The two books we read were My First Kwanzaa by Karen Katz and Seven Candles for Kwanzaa by Dan Pinkney. My first Kwanzaa is a sweet book where a little girl tells the tale of celebrating her first Kwanzaa with her family. The book does a great job of introducing Kwanzaa to a young audience as it explains the 7 principals and also gives the phonetic spelling of Swahili words. Our upper elementary enjoyed Seven Candles for Kwanzaa which explains the origins, language, and daily themes of this lesser known holiday. We all thought it was great to learn about traditions that we didn't know that much about before and were surprised at the similarities that many of these seemingly different traditions share. Isn't it always great when we find out that we are all not so different after all?
