The chapters in this book bring insights about issues that early childhood educators encounter in our increasingly diverse classrooms. Being well prepared to interact all children and their families is a moral imperative that must be addressed at the pre-service level, and this book provides readings that can help future teachers recognize the richness of diversity and its positive contribution to learning.

Pelusa Orellana, Profesora, Facultad de Educación/School of Education, Universidad de los Andes

This book and its collection of authors provides a voice that should be amplified across all teacher-education programs in early childhood [EC]. While we still fight for the rights of our very young to explore the world on their own terms, through playful engagement with the material world, social worlds, self and other, there is so much more to be done to prepare the next generation of teachers to learn to create space for students to activate the home-hewn, problem-solving skills the young learn in the precious language of family, and then bring with them into school. For teachers to learn to not only celebrate, but utilize their students’ linguistic, religious, spiritual, cultural, and familial skills as well as the identities of their families, the journeys they’ve taken, and the differences they offer their peers as the assets of an EC classroom, will take us to new levels of care, advocacy and access for our species’ newest assets, the very young.

Timothy A. Kinard, PhD, associate professor, early education, Texas State University, college of education, department of curriculum & instruction