Building Multiculturalism and Tolerance Through Children's Literature in the Elementary Classroom Library One way to combat discrimination and bullying is through education. Educators can be instrumental teachers of multiculturalism. Through classroom libraries, teachers can provide a wide variety of multicultural books. Elementary classroom libraries are an essential tool to help build cultural awareness and acceptance of diverse families, races, creeds, and learning abilities; therefore bullying will decrease and greater understanding will develop between students. Multicultural classrooms will foster understanding and empathy and create environments of acceptance. According to Suzanne Evans (2010), “using innovative critical literacy Multicultural literacy is one part of this framework. According to Rundie Sims Bishop “Multicultural literacy is linked to the concept of multicultural education, a label that names a variety of different educational practices and strategies” (p. 1). Bishop then gives a deeper meaning to multicultural literacy “a definition of multicultural children's literature as that which represents all the diversity found in this society. No literature, therefore, would be excluded from the body of multicultural literature” (p. 2). So why is multicultural literacy so important? To understand this, we need to take a look at the history of the class. While theory and scholarship has moved from minor curricular revisions to approaches that call for comprehensive transformations of the self, schools, and society, many implementations of multicultural education still begin with curricular additions from diverse sources. But with a more complete understanding of the movement's roots, we are better equipped to follow the transformative path laid out by many educators, activists, and scholars. And it is important to remember that multicultural education is a relatively new concept that will continue to change to meet the needs of an ever-changing society (A Brief History of Multicultural