If you want a world that understands diversity and compassion, it makes sense to start with young children—and it won’t hurt to use a book.
A group of high school students from Marion C. Moore High School in Louisville, Kentucky took that approach. United by the Alphabet is an illustrated, abecedarian book for young children, covering the language of inclusion from A (“Accept”) through Z (“Zeal”), and discussing Community, Justice, Oppression, and Unity along the way. Each spread of the book features an open-ended question so that teachers and mentors can engage students with concepts that might be too advanced for the average picture book.
The authors also included a glossary of the featured terms, and three Louisville cultural nonprofits are integrated into the story.
The group, called the AmaZing Team (you’ll note the A to Z there), created the project as part of Aspen Challenge, an Institute program that helps high schoolers design solutions to some of their community’s most pressing problems. The book is already for sale in local bookstores, and students have used it as a teaching aid with children throughout the community.
You can listen along to an audio version of the book, read by one of the authors, in the video below.
You can learn more about the AmaZing Team’s efforts in this article published by Louisville’s Courier Journal.
