By DK, UNICEF
A photographic book that profiles real children around the world, one to a page, grouped by what every child has a right to: food, clean water, school, and safety.
DK made this book with UNICEF, built around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It profiles real children all over the world and sorts their lives into four plain sections: what a child needs to survive, to grow, to be protected, and to have a say. Every profile is one real child, with a name, a photograph, a country, and a few sentences in their own words about an ordinary day. On one page a child fills a glass at the tap; on another a child walks a long way to a well, and the water isn't clean when they get there. Some of the children go to school and some work instead. Your class can read it like an atlas, dipping in anywhere, and the four sections give it a spine: each one asks whether these children have a particular thing every child is owed.
Most world-cultures books show the bright side: festivals, food, costumes. This one puts real children side by side and shows that a child's life also turns on whether the water is clean and whether school is possible. It doesn't lecture and it doesn't rank the children; it lays their lives out and lets the difference in what they have show on its own. For a class that has spent a week on lanterns and colors, that's the honest other half. Some children your students' age carry water, work, or live through a war, and they're children the same as anyone. It's a harder idea than 'we all celebrate,' and most world-cultures units are missing it.