Talking with Caren Stelson and Ellie Roscher
A moving picture book about war and peace: "There will be times when you’ll feel lonely and homesick. Let the stars of the night and the sun of the day be the messenger of our thoughts and love."
Caren Stelson
Banned Books as Speaking Truth to Power
There is a difference between keeping peace and making peace. It is not about avoiding discomfort and trying to keep everybody happy, but bravely joining in the work of justice. There is a difference between keeping peace and making peace. It is not about avoiding discomfort and trying to keep everybody happy, but bravely joining in the work of justice.
Creating Kind Communities
We explore community building through Higher Ground, with special emphasis on the power of kindness. Together, how can adults and children create genuine community in our schools and beyond?
Finding Peace through Reflection, Art, Story, and Higher Ground for Ourselves and Our Children
In this article, we explore finding peace within. How can we shift our hearts and minds towards peace? How can we help the children in our classrooms do the same? What books, both for children and adults, can support our efforts?
Finding Higher Ground through Peacebuilding
We explore the meaning of peacebuilding and what the infrastructure for peace can look like in one classroom and throughout a school. We also suggest a picture book and a book for the “adult on the rug,” both of which explore the deep concept of peacebuilding,
Finding Higher Ground
In this article and the next three articles to come, we will explore paths to peace and peacebuilding in classrooms and schools through the lens of Higher Ground and the power of story and art.
Big Worries in Little Bodies
It can be easy to dismiss the worries of a child, but to that child, they may feel consuming. When we do not name and talk about our anxieties, or when we do share them and they are discounted, shame around them can grow.
Compassionate Listening Deconstructs Fences
Caren: When my daughter Beth was fourteen, she traveled with a small exchange group of teens to Poland where she would live with a couple and their teen daughter in a small village. In a true exchange, the Polish teens then traveled to Minnesota for a similar experience. Neither group spoke the other’s language. Recently, while cleaning out boxes, I found a reflection Beth wrote of that experience:
The Polish kids taught me one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned; the power of a smile … I thought that to create the iron strong bonds of friendship, a common language was essential.
Tiny Steps Toward Peace
When I say the word Peacemaker, who is the first person that comes to mind? It is so important to teach children about famous peacemakers but if we only teach about folks who have become larger than life, children may put peacemaking on a pedestal that seems unattainable for themselves.
Finding Peace While Grieving
Some days are tough. During this COVID-19 pandemic, our children face plenty of challenges. Loss of playground time. Loss of playdates. Changes in school routines. Changes in home routines. These days, children may need more time alone on a “peace blanket” to grieve their former lives. The rest of us may need the same.
The Alchemy of Fry Bread
Bread brings people together. The ingredients in bread are so elemental. When combined with love, they nourish and sustain a people. At the center of a gathering, at the center of a culture is a foundational grain that sustains life—naan, tortilla, rice, ugali, injera, and fry bread to name a few. Food, then, is a bridge between worlds.
Eco-Peace: Reimagining the Possibility
Part of our work as peacemakers is to properly situate ourselves in a web of life. We are creatures in a vast, brilliant and complex ecosystem called not to dominate, but to live with in harmonious relationship. Children often seem naturally drawn to animals and nature, with an inherent ability to walk gently on the green earth. As they grow, there are many wonderful books to nurture their instincts toward ecological peace.
The Kindness Factor
As we write this article, we are in the middle of a world-wide pandemic and a consequential election season. Both events ask us to address big, core questions: What kind of people do we want to be? How do we resolve our conflicts?
Caren Stelson
Caren Stelson
The book I wish everyone would read:
I love Make Way for Ducklings written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey, and I wish every parent and child would read this ageless picture book together. Why do I love Make Way for Ducklings? Let me start with the fact that my family is from Boston and Make Way for Ducklings takes place in the city of Boston. In
Naming Your Labels
Living from a Place of Inner Peace
Ellie: Michael Hall’s Red: A Crayon’s Story is the tale of a blue crayon with a red label. The crayon was not very good at being red. He couldn’t draw strawberries or work with yellow to draw an orange. Everyone tried to help. Even scissors and sharpeners made snips and tucks to see if changing him would help.
No Justice. [No Action.] No Peace.
Caren: “No justice. No peace.” This summer, millions of people – young, old and from all backgrounds — protested police brutality and systemic racism, all during an historic pandemic. Ellie Roscher and I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, not far from where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer and close to the epicenter of marches and protests.… more
War and Peace
“What happened to me must never happen to you.”
Caren: Those were the first words Sachiko Yasui, a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor, told me as we began our work together writing her story. On August 9, 1945, at 11:02, six-year-old Sachiko was playing outside with her friends, making mud dumplings, when the second atomic bomb of World War II exploded over her city of Nagasaki.… more
Compassion and Empathy in Peace-making
One of the activities I do with young people is called speed dating. It’s an empathy building exercise because, I have found, we actually have to practice talking to each other and really listening.
Peace and the Sense of Belonging
Caren: “More Together than Alone,”
Peace and the Sense of Belonging Home. Community. A sense of belonging. Don’t we all long for love and connection? And when the anchored sense of belonging disappears, we spot it — on the drawn face of a child alone on a playground or on an elderly face of someone alone on a park bench. Haven’t we all felt that moment of dislocated loneliness?… more
Peace and the Sense of Belonging Home. Community. A sense of belonging. Don’t we all long for love and connection? And when the anchored sense of belonging disappears, we spot it — on the drawn face of a child alone on a playground or on an elderly face of someone alone on a park bench. Haven’t we all felt that moment of dislocated loneliness?… more
Knowing Your Past to Make Peace
Welcome to Peace-ology. We are two children’s authors teaming up to review children’s books with peace in mind.
Ellie: The other day, I looked over the shoulder of my five-year-old to see what he was drawing. There was the Ireland flag on the left, the Norway flag on the right, and he was finishing the United States flag in the middle.… more
Reading Books Through the Lens of Peace
Welcome to Peace-ology. We are two children’s authors teaming up to review children’s books with peace in mind.
Caren: After all our interviews for our book Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story, I asked the book’s inspiration, peace educator Sachiko Yasui, if she had any last words she would like to share with children.
Sachiko’s response was to think about this:
What is peace?… more
Skinny Dip with Caren Stelson
We interviewed Caren Stelson, first-time author, whose nonfiction book Sachiko: a Nagasaki Bomb Survivor Story has received a good deal of positive recognition, including the longlist for the National Book Award and inclusion on many Best Books of 2016 lists. (Her name is pronounced just as you would say Karen.)
Which celebrity would invite you like to invite to a coffee shop?… more