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.

Friendship

One of the most beau­ti­ful qual­i­ties of a true friend­ship is to under­stand and to be under­stood.” (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Grow­ing up it was dif­fi­cult for me to make friends. Some of the key phras­es I was told includ­ed: “it is a nat­ur­al process,” “the sky is full of many stars, but hav­ing one friend is larg­er than the uni­verse,” and “smile to every­one you walk past.” 
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You Should (Not) Read These Books

You Are (Not) Small
I remem­ber my neigh­bor­hood friends stand­ing on oppo­site sides of a dri­ve­way, angry, yelling loud­ly at each oth­er. I don’t recall why, but I can still feel those emo­tions. That’s how strong feel­ings are. Our chil­dren deal with a mul­ti­tude of emo­tions every day. You were prob­a­bly remem­ber­ing sim­i­lar instances from your child­hood. And what hap­pened after­ward? Most like­ly you were all friends again, because you need­ed to be.
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Hand in Hand

I live and work in a train com­mu­ni­ty and often use trains as an anal­o­gy when I talk about sto­ry­time. Like a train, sto­ry­time offers an audi­ence a chance to hop on board to expe­ri­ence a new world with char­ac­ters. The char­ac­ters of a sto­ry can help us under­stand some of the expe­ri­ences the chil­dren lis­ten­ing to the sto­ry might be going through.… more

Beethoven in Paradise

Beethoven in Paradise
Fresh Lookol­o­gy fea­tures books pub­lished sev­er­al years ago that are too good to lan­guish on the shelf. Mar­tin Pittman takes a reader’s heart and runs with it. He lives in a trail­er park called Par­adise, but his home life is any­thing but. Martin’s father is abu­sive, his moth­er com­plete­ly cowed. He has no sib­lings. His grand­ma, Haze­line, who comes on Sun­days to take him to the Howard John­son Prince of Wales buf­fet, is quite a char­ac­ter — one the read­er is unsure of at first.… more

LOVE

Love
writ­ten by Sta­cy McAnulty
illus­trat­ed by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Run­ning Press Kids, Decem­ber 2018 Here is a book to give to those peo­ple who imme­di­ate­ly jump to your mind when you think of love. Love isn’t about objects or com­mer­cial hol­i­days or competition. It’s about time spent togeth­er, mak­ing mem­o­ries, being thought­ful, notic­ing the details (I saw that “bag of cheeze-it” on the refrig­er­a­tor gro­cery list.),… more

School-Themed Books That Build Empathy

Hannah's Way
Dur­ing one of our vis­its to our local library in late sum­mer, sev­er­al of the books on dis­play caught my eye. School was the com­mon thread, and my fam­i­ly found some good con­ver­sa­tion starters among the titles. I’ll high­light three that have mer­it as texts that help build empa­thy and/or broad­en chil­dren’s views about school and education.… more

School-Themed Books That Build Empathy

Hannah's Way
Dur­ing one of our vis­its to our local library in late sum­mer, sev­er­al of the books on dis­play caught my eye. School was the com­mon thread, and my fam­i­ly found some good con­ver­sa­tion starters among the titles. I’ll high­light three that have mer­it as texts that help build empa­thy and/or broad­en chil­dren’s views about school and education.… more

You Write Books with … Messages?

Elizabeth Verdick
Yes. Yes I do. Sure, I know there’s a whole school of thought that says “shar­ing a mes­sage” in a children’s book is some­thing to avoid. That chil­dren will learn more, feel more, by read­ing books—sto­ries—that evoke an emo­tion­al response and increase empa­thy through strong char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and vivid lan­guage. Yes. Yes that’s true. But.… Some­times chil­dren, and the adults rais­ing and teach­ing them, need straight­for­ward tools that address social and emo­tion­al chal­lenges and mile­stones.… more

Imaginary Selves

Each of us knows well the per­son we imag­ine our­selves to be. I’m guess­ing that this imag­i­nary per­son has changed shape and iden­ti­ty through­out your life. As a child, do you remem­ber your secret iden­ti­ty? Mine was a fear­less super­hero ver­sion of myself, because fear­less I was not. If Richard Tor­rey had known that, he sure­ly would have drawn me a cape and mys­ti­cal arm­bands and a tiny crown with his tal­ent­ed, per­cep­tive vision and his oil-based pencils. … more