CHARNAIE GORDON: Seeing yourself reflected on the pages of the book, it just does something to you. I started my blog Here Wee Read back in February of 2015. It was a way for me to have a creative outlet, but also like an extension of books, which is also something that I love. I started to focus on children's books, more specifically diverse children's books. Also along that time, I became an author. The incident of 2020 happened with George Floyd. Myself, as well as other influencers who talk about diversity, we all saw this huge bump within a matter of days. And it was just like, everybody was craving this information. They wanted to know more about diverse folks, and we wanted to know how can they start reading diverse books with their kids. And I feel like books are the tools and resources that can sometimes help give them those answers to real life, real world problems that they are facing. Books can help children cope with a lot of the issues that we're seeing in the world today. One of the benefits of reading aloud is that if you read a word in a book, and you are reading it and you say, hey, that's a pretty big word. Do you know, does everybody understand what that word means? And so that's an opportunity to invite discussion around the vocabulary word that maybe not everybody's familiar with. Seeing yourself reflected on the pages of a book, it just does something to you. It's like, that's me. Or hey, they look like me. Oh my God. They have a mole like me right by their eye, or their teeth look like mine. And maybe they have a gap in their teeth like me. Kids can't be what they don't see. I hope people walk away with just learning how to respect one another, really. How to see people that are different from you, and understand some of their struggles at times. But also their joy.