WELCOME
This is a reading guide designed to accompany Milo’s Museum, by Zetta Elliott. We recommend that grownups read the focus book and the reading guide content BEFORE reading with young readers. This guide will help you prepare your own questions for your young readers and choose vocabulary, history, and other related topics to integrate into your learning and discussion.
Lesson content was written by ZAPOURA NEWTON-CALVERT and was designed to start or deepen anti-racist and anti-bias conversations in families and other learning communities.
THEMES
IDENTITY, COMMUNITY, ART, BELONGING, ACTION
WATCH & LISTEN TO THE READ ALOUD
SUMMARY
Milo and her grandfather, who is a chaperone, go on a class field trip to the local museum. Milo learns that museums “hold all the objects that people feel are valuable or important,” and she has a funny feeling because she doesn’t see herself, her identity, or her culture represented at the museum. Milo decides to take action and to design her own museum with what is valuable and important to her. How will her neighborhood respond?
This is an important story about representation and whose faces, voices, and stories are often silenced and excluded from museums, textbooks, and other mainstream media. This is also a story about taking action when something is not right. With the help of her aunt, Milo takes an idea about making her own museum and runs with it -- inspiring those around her in the process.
Where does your own identity intersect with what this book talks about? How does your own identity impact the way you read, select books, experience books? How does your own identity impact the way you view art and select outings and field trips? In what ways can you grow your imagination, curiosity, and learning around how art is displayed, who is often represented, and who is doing the good work of including myriad voices and stories with your anti-racist practice?
HOW WE DESIGN OUR READING GUIDES
This guided reading lesson is designed to be part of a larger life-long commitment to anti-racist reading and learning for the student and the facilitator. Reading Is Resistance sees reading as an opportunity to seed deeper conversations and opportunities for action around racial equity in our communities. We hold the belief that being anti-racist is a process of learning (and unlearning) over time.
The Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards (focused on Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action) serve as guides for our work.
A COMPLETE TABLE OF LEARNING FOR JUSTICE STANDARDS THAT WE USE TO COMPILE THIS READING GUIDE IS AVAILABLE IN THE FULL-LENGTH PDF
PREVIEW READ + DISCUSS QUESTIONS
BEFORE READING
REFLECTION: Have you been to a museum? Do you remember what it felt like to be there?
REFLECTION: Look at the front cover of the book. What emotions do you see? What kinds of actions do you see? Who are the characters? What makes you curious?
IDENTITY.K-2.1: Name some of your group identities.
Grown ups, use any of these resources to support an exploration of group identities:
Identity video: Identity and Values Video
Social Identity Lists: Social Identities, The Big 8 Identities
Identity Activities: Social Identity Wheel, Identity Self Portrait
Make sure you touch on race and ethnicity as part of this exercise. These concepts are integral to understanding this story.
IDENTITY.K-2.1: Think about the list of group identities you have come up with. Which identities are your individual identities? Which identities are part of your family’s history and culture?
PREVIEW RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES
These are optional resources that can extend your learning started in the focus book. Take some time to peruse, enjoy, imagine, and learn.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR & BOOK
MORE RESOURCES ARE INCLUDED IN THE FULL-LENGTH PDF
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