Welcome to the third week of WNDB Summer Reading! We are excited for everyone to join together, while many of us are home, to engage in discussions on race and diversity. This week we will be focusing on the picture book Antiracist Baby by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.
As you begin exploring Antiracist Baby, please check out this education guide designed by Education Researcher B. J. McDaniel to help encourage discussion and engagement. Included are comprehension questions, follow-up activities, and a further reading list to help your build on the nine steps outlined in Antiracist Baby.
WNDB is proud to be partnering with Mahogany Books, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC, for this program. Please consider ordering your books with them. Email your receipt from Mahogany Books to carolinerichmond@wndb.local to receive #WNDBSummerReading bookmarks and WNDB stickers, while supplies last.
TRANSCRIPT:
[credits]
VOICEOVER: Welcome to the last week of WNDB’s Summer Reading. Our picture book pick is ANTIRACISTBABY, written by Dr. Ibram Kendi and illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. Here’s more on the book from the author and illustrator in their own words.
[clip from NICK NEWS: Author of “Antiracist Baby” Children’s Book Interviewed by Alicia Keys]
DR. IBRAM KENDI: We oftentimes use books to really start conversations, and so it was really book that I wrote for my daughter. [shows image of Dr. Kendi with his young daughter, Imani]
[clip from: HAYMARKET/LABYRINTH BOOKS: Raising Antiracist Kids: Empowering the Next Generation of Changemakers]
DR. IBRAM KENDI: [sitting with his daughter IMANI in his lap] ANTIRACISTBABY, all right, who’s on the cover?
IMANI: Imani!
DR. IBRAM KENDI: That’s Imani! Okay. [laughs]
[clip from: POLITICS & PROSE: Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky “Antiracist Baby”]
[Dr. Ibram Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky in a split screen, she is on the left, he is on the right]
DR. IBRAM KENDI: I wanted to have a tool to basically teach her to be antiracist. It’s one thing to tell a child what not to be. I think it’s even more important to share with them how they should be, and so I thought this book could help us with Imani, and I suspect other parents were struggling as well. And I also thought that there were also many parents who believed that their children were color blind, and so I was also hoping that this book would would start a conversation, would allow people to stare at the face of the data that states that we need to be teaching our children to be antiracist, because if we’re not then they’re ultimately going to be raised to be racist.
ASHLEY LUKASHEVSKY: There are so many oppressive, racist structures that we need to dismantle and destroy and build anew, but we need to also know what that’s going to look
like, and we need to be able to dream and imagine and to be able to have a tool that helps parents do this imagination work with their kids. It is really beautiful and something that gives me a lot of hope. This book does really portray a lot of different kinds of love, and that was something that was really important to me in my interpretation of this — is just that I wanted people to feel celebrated. I want all kinds of families, people to share this with their children and feel reflected in it.
[clip from: HAYMARKET/LABYRINTH BOOKS]
DR. IBRAM KENDI: [sitting with his daughter IMANI in his lap] I think it’s also critically important for us to create mechanisms for our kids to ask us about racism. So that means obviously I’ve seen many parents who’ve decided to take their youngest children to demonstrations so their kids can be like well, whatever, why is everyone, you know, demonstrating? So that gives you the opportunity to talk, you know, obviously this book is a tool for those conversations as well. Right, Imani?
IMANI: Right!
DR. IBRAM KENDI: It was just truly special for me to be able to to write this book and even for Imani to see herself in it. You know there’s boys and girls of every race, there’s love, there’s queer love, there’s interracial love, there’s Black love, there’s Latinx love, and and really the book is founded on love and really based on love, because being antiracist is really about love. We should be wanting to raise our babies to be antiracist because because we love them.
CREDITS:
Produced by JoAnn Yao
Edited by Anya Steiner
Graphics by Amber Hooke
Captions by Elissa Petruzzi
Excerpt from ANTIRACIST BABY © Penguin Random House
Clips (in order of appearance):
Section 1 : NICK NEWS: Author of “Antiracist Baby” Children’s Book Interviewed by Alicia Keys
Section 2: HAYMARKET/LABYRINTH BOOKS: Raising Antiracist Kids: Empowering the Next Generation of Changemakers
Section 3: POLITICS & PROSE: Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky “Antiracist Baby”
Section 4: HAYMARKET/LABYRINTH BOOKS: Raising Antiracist Kids: Empowering the Next Generation of Changemakers
This compilation is for educational purposes only. All videos belong to their respective owners/creators.
