Next week, students in 4th and 5th grade (both in the LGRP and PYP section) will be invited to join the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Book Club at ISGR. It is completely voluntary, and hopefully engaging and meaningful, and will inspire us to take action. The UN announces in the first week of each month a reading list connected to one of the goals. It starts this month, in April, with goal #1: No Poverty. In May, we move on to #2. And so on. Our SDG Book Club will run for 17 months, on Wednesday afternoons in our school library.
Our first meeting takes place on Wednesday, May 15th, 14.40 – 15.30 in our schoo llibrary. See below for the Reading List for the #1 Goal: No Poverty. All the books will be available in our school library after the Easter Break. Depending on how many students are interested in joining our SDG Book Club, we may buy full reading sets of each of the books – or we concentrate on one book. We will be guided by our students’ interests. If your child wishes to join the Book Club, they can tell me personally or you can email me with your child’s name and class. If you have any of the books on the reading list, and you’re willing to share it for a month, that would be wonderful!
Our second SDG Book Club meeting takes place on Wednesday, June 12th, 14.40 – 15.30 in our school library. After that, we pick it up again when the new school year starts.
We are looking forward to welcoming many critical readers, thinkers and action-takers to our SDG Book Club!
Reading list for SDG #1: No Poverty
Serafina’s Promise
This tale of one girl’s aspirations to be a doctor is a sad and unflinching depiction of poverty in Haiti but also an uplifting story about the power of love. Serafina both gives to and receives from her parents an understanding and fervent love. It’s this nucleus of her family which supports her through all hardships. This is a thoroughly engrossing piece of imagined reality, guaranteed to whet the appetite for more such literature. It is also saturated with warmth in its tales of friendship, experiences that buoy the narrator even as she watches a baby brother fade into nothingness, blighting her faith in humanity.
Author: Ann E. Burg | Illustrator: Sean Qualls | ISBN: 978-0545535670 | Publisher:Scholastic Press
Last Stop on Market Street
A beautifully illustrated book that looks at material poverty through the eyes of a young boy who rides on a bus with his grandmother across town. As CJ points out the things that other people have that he doesn’t, his grandmother responds with a positive and hopeful answer to show the beauty of life’s simpler things, the wonderful people who they know and meet on their ride through the city, and how rich their lives already are.
Author: Matt de la Pena | Illustrator: Christian Robinson | ISBN: 978-0399257742 |Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Reader
A Chair For My Mother
This book describes the dedication in restoring and rebuilding your life after a devastating fire. The fear and uncertainty are real for so many people around the world living in poverty. This book gives hope and is the perfect example of giving to those in need. The little girl focuses on the important things in live and the importance of giving and doing something for others. This story also shows how three strong women overcome hardship and restore their lives.
Author: Vera B Williams | Illustrator: Vera B Williams | ISBN: 978-0688040741 | Publisher: Greenwillow Books
The Happy Prince
High above a city stands a gilded statue of the Happy Prince and a swallow who both witness the suffering, injustice and poverty of the people below. At the behest of the Happy Prince, the swallow begins to strip the statue of its jewels and gold leaf to give to the city’s poor. A poignant story by Oscar Wilde about compassion, charity, and selflessness.
Author: Oscar Wilde | Illustrator: Maisie Paradise Shearring | ISBN: 978-0500651117 | Publisher: Thames & Hudson
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