While looking for multicultural books to read to children a teacher is often faced with limited choices. A wonderful book that I will chose to keep in my future classroom is The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop. This book is not only entertaining, it also has a moral that can be taught to young children to follow. I really believe that the children will love the basic illustrations that are provided in this book, with the dialogue presented and in the end, it's a happy ending. This book is one about five brothers who all look identical but they all have special qualities about them. When the one brother gets in trouble, his four other brothers are always there to help him out by using their special qualities. And in the end, you see that this group of brothers all support each other and will have the others back no matter what.
An activity that you can do with a class of kindergarten or 1st grade class is to read aloud with the class the book and have them all write down what they think their special trait is about themselves that is unique and share with the class.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, it's wonderful to bring multicultural books into the classroom to show the children diversity. This book is perfect because it can relate to every type of culture, not just the Chinese culture.
