Ours is a growing and wonderful community. With growth, however, come greater challenges and even greater opportunities. Our community consists of many people from many different cultures and with growth it will become even more diverse. We have all seen tragedies unfold in schools across the country and as made evident by the necessity of our bullying policy, the issues of ignorance and intolerance are also alive and well here at home. This is why we must address issues surrounding cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is simply the blending of different cultures – people with different backgrounds, routines, looks, beliefs, styles of dress all coming together to form a community. The challenge is do we continue to stick our head in the sand and hope that our children will not fear, bully our outcast those who are different than them? Do we hope that consequences will alleviate bullying? Or do we take a proactive stance by educating them on their differences and teaching them that diversity is a positive thing? I know, as parents, that we don’t want our children put in the position we’ve seen played out so many times on the news. They can be taught that our society can and should be viewed as a body. Each part is different and cannot be compared to another, but also cannot exist in a full or healthy manner without the other. We need to learn and teach our children, even learn with them, to celebrate the differences in others. Encourage them to be curious about worlds different than our own. We can’t teach our children what we ourselves do not know, but literature is an easily accessible tool to help us. Books can help us to approach subjects that we may be either uncomfortable discussing or not be knowledgeable about. No one person or book can introduce our children to these cultures, but by introducing them to a diverse . Thankfully, there are