I appreciate Dumor's Ted Talk as it provides key reminders.  1) Keep the narrative balanced - for my young third graders, their exposure to anything Africa is probably through extreme news situations (disasters, conflicts, etc.), Disney's messaging, and when they hear "African American."  If a third grader is asked why we have that term "African American,"  they might say because it represents people who's ancestry was from Africa and they got to this continent through the slave trade. (Though was anything "traded?") The task is real and immense when I try to imagine balancing this perception.    I'm reminded of the practice of using global literature but always introduce pairs of books together so that students aren't left with just one version of a place or situation.

2) When in doubt, ask an Africa expert.  Who is an African expert?  This is where my toolbox is close to empty.  This course has opened up several possibilities.  I'm reminded to seek out the local university for potential guest speakers, to scour YouTube for appropriate videos and to contact our local immigrant communities for potential guest speakers.  

3) Hire the best expert to tell the story.  I'm not in a position to hire, but I am in the position to vet sources I share with my students.  For children, some of the best sources are children.  I'm encouraged to look again at cross/classroom opportunities through platforms like empatico.org.

I recently launched a "Backpacks at Home" project in which I organized 10 backpacks with 10-20 books on a theme or region and included a traveling journal and box of tools (colored pencils, pencils and pens).  There might be a game or realia depending on my supplies and the theme.  When I organized to make the "African Continent" backpack, I found too many of my books were about Egypt and too many were folktales.  Instead of packing it with 20 books that presented a potentially "unbalanced" perspective, I narrowed it down to 10 with only 1 book on Egypt and no folktales unless they were retold by a person from that African country, preferably published in that country first and then translated to English (though those are hard to find!).  

An extension at some point would be to study a book as a class with an evaluative eye.  It is appropriate critical thinking for students to question the source, the research behind the text and especially the illustrations.