This Wednesday: Reading Still Does a Body Good
Problem:
At 11:50pm, last Friday night, I strolled into my local bookstore to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the latest and last book in J.K. Rowling’s brilliant series of fantasy novels. My experience was shorter than most; in neighboring towns there was a wait exceeding an hour long, with bookstore events that started early in the afternoon.
While the crowd was primarily in the mid-teens to adult range, most had been hooked on reading by this series as children, staring with the first book in 1997. During a time in a child’s life when reading = homework and is often considered as “cool” as chess club, they began to beg their parents to wait for hours in a line in order to start reading a book at the earliest moment possible. It has been, in a word, “magical.”
Of course, these books are intended for older children and young adults (especially the latest ones), but you don’t want to wait for your child to reach double digits in age before getting them “book-hooked.” And we want the values and morals of those books to mirror our own. Even if you don’t have kids of your own, as progressives, we want the next generation to be intelligent, articulate, and tolerant children. We want a generation in which every child wants and has a book in their hands.
Make Progress:
To take some action this Wednesday is simple, really. It’s simple as A, B, C, D, one, two, three, four….
Buy (or Borrow) & Read:
We’ve compiled a brief list of books (sixteen to be exact) we’d recommend reading to your future progressives. If you’re interested in picking up a copy of any of these tomes for your very own, we recommend going through a small, privately-owned Western New York business, The Book Corner. These guys make finding odd or out-print-books look like making instant pudding. (Mmm… pudding.) Of course, you can always hunt down most of these titles through your local library or library system (we did).
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I Live on a Farm by Stasia Ward Kehoe
Kehoe’s book uses photos instead of illustrations, and teaches children about items and actions unique to farm, such as storage silos, bales of hay, barns, tractors, harvesting, and irrigating. The book also has a discreet anti-pesticide message. We believe this book will help kids who live on farms have more pride about where they live, and will help suburban and city kids better understand life in rural America. Empathy is the most progressive of emotions.
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Spiders by Ann Heinrichs
Spiders is a children’s science book that discusses the benefits of spiders (which are referred to as “nature’s friends”) to both the environment and humans. With Heinrichs’ book, kids can learn key science terms, scientific history, cultural myths, and facts about reproduction. The text also addresses the common fear of spiders: “Spiders are afraid of you. To a spider, you look like a giant.” To further ease fears, Spiders emphasizes that very few arachnids are dangerous to humans. Kids also encouraged to be in awe of both spiders’ silk and webs. We’ll take appropriate awe over fear any day.
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At Daddy’s on Saturdays by Linda Walvoord Girard
This 32-page picture-book helps kids understand the true causes of divorce (read: it’s not the child’s fault). Little readers also learn that both parents, despite separation, still love their children, that sadness is an understandable reaction, and that a child can feel at home with both their mother and father. We highly recommend At Daddy’s on Saturday’s, as well as the other books by Girard, who’s not afraid to tackle emotionally charged topics like AIDS, adoption, and sexual abuse.
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Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport
This beautifully designed book won Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2001 from the New York Times Book Review, and deserved it. The book shares the biography of Dr. King along side breathtaking drawings and pithy, inspiring quotations drawn from Dr. King. The heart of the book is that courage, love, learning, and human rights shall win the day. Rappaport doesn’t gloss over Dr. King’s death, and she reminds kids that good work and good words on earth live on after you do. Both are, in fact, a way to make progress.
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Conservation by Richard Gates
While seeming somewhat dated (it was published in 1988), Gate’s book is desperately relevant today. Fantastic photographs grace each page depicting, first, the way forests and the great plains used to be, then the way humans damaged the land, and therefore the animals, to suit their needs and desires. Toward the end, the book takes a turn as it describes the need to save nature, “guarding what we have, and not wasting it” which children can do in “[their] own backyard[s].” As a kind of conclusion, Gates depicts jobs in conservation and explains practical ways to protect animals and plants: “They are important in more ways than we know.” We think this is the kind of children’s book that would help remind adults of our moral obligation to the earth.
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Every Day is Earth Day by Kathy Ross
While Every Day is Earth Day shares a world-view with Conversation, it focuses its energy on the annual Earth Day (April 22) and its purposes. The bulk of Ross’s book describes and depicts activities kids can do to help promote a healthy earth. Our favorites include: a seedling necklace (which encourages kids to plant flowers); a wind sock (which shows kids that they can make crafts by recycling other materials); and a bird’s nest supply box (which is an empty milk carton filled with little things like dryer lint, hair, and bits of string).
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Jackson Pollock by Mike Venezia
This is one in a series of books about artists which also includes folks like Mary Cassatt, Salvator Dali, Georgia O’Keefe, and the requisite Pablo Picasso. Jackson Pollock includes both a biography with cartoon illustrations and photos of his work before he began action-paintings and of the more famous drip-paintings, too. The book doesn’t back away from lessons in art history, and explains abstract expressionism in ways kids can comprehend. Venezia ends up showing the power of imagination because it can lead one to success, and encourages kids to go to museums: “It’s a good idea to see Jackson Pollock’s paintings in person. The special feeling you get of being in an explosion of color and energy has a lot to do with their large size.” We’re willing to wager the other books in this series carry similarly progressive lessons and suggestions.
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Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
In this 1940 children’s book, an elephant battles through rain, snow, taunting, hunters, and sea-sickness in order to hatch a bird’s egg. While the plot can be reduced to a sentence, the variety of morals cannot. Geisel teaches: the problems can grow with laziness; good parenting involves carrying for your young; helping others is virtuous; one should be faithful to promises; there are creative solutions to unusual problems; animals are not designed for the amusement of humans; and when you dedicate yourself to creating something, part of you enters into it. It’s simple story mixed with its litany of responsible morals, making this one of our faves.
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The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
This Seuss book is told mainly in the past tense, and tells the story of a beautiful environment destroyed by greed, big business, and an apathy toward those warning about the destruction of the sky, the water, the land, the plants, and the animals. The crux of the problem is the clear cutting of “Truffula Trees” into extinction. In the end, the person responsible for the destruction gives one last seed to Truffula Trees to a child, and it’s up to him to solve the problem and protect the environment. While this book is a condemnation of big business gone out of control and a proponent of conservationism, the story also teaches children that they can be heroes.
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Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella Hathoff, Craig Hathoff, and Paula Kahumba
This children’s book tells a true story with photographs of the actual characters. The plot goes a little something like this: a baby hippopotamus, Owen, is abandoned in the wild, saved by fishermen, placed in an animal sanctuary with other animals, and befriends a tortoise, Mzee, who teaches Owen how to eat. We learn that science can’t totally explain their relationship, which includes eating, swimming, drinking, sleeping together, as well as demonstrations of affection. Kids end up learning about hippos, tortoises, African countries, and on a larger level, they learn that odd friendships are okay, and that even if two people appear different on the outside they can still get along.
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The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss
This story, one of Geisel’s last, tells the story of Zooks and Yooks, two groups of people who live on opposite sides of an enormous wall, and who despise one another because one eats bread and butter with the butter up and the other with the butter-side down. The two sides fight over the wall with very basic weapons like slingshots, but this quickly escalates, with each side developing larger and wilder weaponry. Eventually the weapons grow so powerful that the two sides don’t actually attack and rather threaten the other side with attack. Both sides end up developing a tiny yet incredibly power bomb, and the citizens are forced into bomb shelters. The book closes unresolved, with both sides threatening to drop this destruction on the other. While clearly a book about the Cold War, this book also teaches children that hatred (which can be ridiculous in its origins) and violence lead to more intense levels of hatred and violence. The moral seems to be, in a word, peace.
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Pet Show by Ezra Jack Keats
Archie, an African-American boy, is the protagonist of this book, in which a pet show occurs in an urban neighborhood where kids can show off their pets. Archie can’t find his cat, and hustles around trying to find his pet so that it can be judged. In the end, Archie brings a glass jar and says that he has brought a pet germ. He wins a blue ribbon for quietest pet. For our money this book teaches two things: first, that creativity and imagination can be used for problem-solving; and second, that a black child can (and should) be the focus of a story that does not overtly deal with race.
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Adoption is for Always by Linda Walvoord Girard
Adoption strikes us one of the ultimate progressive acts. The story in Girard’s picture-book explains adoption and birthmothers and birthfathers alongside realistic black and white illustrations. Because the main character goes through a series of emotions while coming to understand her adoption (loneliness, self-doubt, anger, sadness, and fear), Girard helps adopted children by validating their feelings and at the same time comforting them. For adopted children, this seems like a must-read.
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Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats
This Keats’ book, like his Pet Show, has an African-American little boy as the main character. Peter is the brother to a new baby sister in the house, and he notices that all his old things are being converted to fit his sibling. So Peter takes his old chair away, and thinks about running away from home with his pet dachshund. After realizing that he doesn’t fit in the old chair any more, Peter sits in a “grown up chair” and agrees to help his father paint the old chair for his sister. This book, while subtly battling against racism, teaches children about growing up and caring for one’s siblings despite initially resenting the attention the new child gets.
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Haiku: the mood of the earth by Ann Atword
Before we describe anything else, we need to point out that the photos in this collection of poetry are absolutely gorgeous, and for that reason alone we urge you to check it out for your kids. Haiku is a good form of poetry to teach children because each piece is brief, encourages attention to syllables (when written in the English-language tradition of 5-7-5), and gets kids to pay closer attention to details and the natural world. Teaching conservation, it seems to us, is aided by teaching children to appreciate the environment, something haiku is, essentially, designed to do.
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Seven Brave Women by Betsy Hewne
For our money, the opening of Seven Brave Women sets a fantastic tone: “In the old days, history books marking time by the wars that men fought, but there are other ways to tell time.” The book tells the story of seven generations of women in one little girl’s family. Each lived through a different war, but didn’t fight (“My mother does not believe that wars should be fought at all.” ). The women make art, care for the sick, write books, and care for animals, amongst other positive acts. Hewne’s book ends with the little girl who narrates explaining that she will make her own history like her ancestors did, because “there are a million ways to be brave.” Besides providing positive role models for girls, the book also promotes peace over violence, and bravery outside the bounds of wars.
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You might also check out Dora Goes to School, All Families Are Special, and Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon.
Find & Tell:
If you’d like a method for discovering additional famous and not-so-famous progressive easy-readers, you can ask librarians online 24/7. Allow us to point you to Read This Now, a service provided by the public libraries in Ohio. To increase the odds you get a like-minded librarian assisting you online, we recommend entering the zip codes for either Columbus (43210) or Cleveland (44101), two of the more progressive cities in the Buckeye State.
When you find other suggestions, we’d dig hearing them — just contact us and we’ll pass them along to our readers. Also, you can start a List or a Guide of recommended children’s books on Amazon.com. Here’s the thing, just label it “Great Children’s Books” or something like that. There’s no need to label them as progressive. They’re just great books, so call them that.
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Recycle:
There are kids out there who don’t own books. While they might have access to a library, some, because of a lack of transportation, might not be able to make it to a library. Even if kids in poverty can get to a library, there’s something special about owning books. There’s sense of pride and confidence that comes with owning a book, and there’s a treasuring, a lasting memory. I still remember the first book I could read: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. And I remember my favorite picture book as a kid: The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone. Besides, all children deserve a chance to feed their minds, both for their sakes as well as the culture’s.
There are some very easy (maybe obvious to some) ways to donate used children’s books: hospitals, your local Salvation Army or Goodwill, poor school districts, libraries, and shelters.
For whatever reason, if you’re interested in other options, here are five organizations through which you can pass along the gift of language to kids truly in need of your kindness:
Gently Used Books:
Brand-Spanking New Books:
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Give:
We recently learned about therapy dogs being used by elementary school children as a way to improve their reading skills. The children read aloud to the dog, and often feel more comfortable doing this because the dog sits calmly nearby, apparently listening, and giving no criticisms.
So there’s three things you could do:
- Learn more about therapy dogs here and here.
- Contact Therapy Dogs International (here’s their homepage) and see if your dog could qualify for the reading program.
- Donate a small amount of money to this fantastic organization.
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Photo care of this dog lover.
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