Cleaning out my inbox always yields some cultural related treasure. This weeks find is the website My Panda Paws

The site was started by two Chinese-American moms who wanted to pass on their heritage, culture, traditions and language to their children. Even though there are many bilingual products in the market already many of them did not meet the quality standards of thee moms. One of the things important to them...good translation. Seems many books in the market place tend to translate each word literally, and therefore many times losing the essence of the book.

As a mom I can understand the feeling behind their goal. After having a biracial child you look for ways to include all the parts that make your child whole. In a world that still views many things with mono-racial glasses seeing sites like this is encouraging.

Of course I ran all thru the website checking out how culturally aware their products are. I was pleasantly surprised to find that while the main theme of learning the chinese language and culture was...well the main theme...they included products by other cultures. More exciting is I found a few things that included *gasp* black images.

I'm loving this All About Me from the Lift the Flap book series. Now you probably don't understand how key this is on both sides of the kiddy spectrum. First seeing the black image introduces racial awareness to young children. I've read one to many articles about parents raising their children in isolation from other cultures.

Second, as a mom of a black and asian child I want him to see children in books and products that reflect his community, images he can relate to, products that mix both black and asian culture...sorta. Granted there's still a while to go before there's anything made specifically for the blasian community but until then...sites like this help.