Posts tagged: Books

Connecting with A River of Dust

Scientists who study the environment made an amazing discovery in the 1960s: the health of the Amazon forests depend in…

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Looking Beneath with Kids

Everyone - young or old - have bad days. Days when it’s hard to get out of bed. Days when we don’t feel like…

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Exploring Cicada Symphony with Kids

Every year, cicadas awaken from a long dormant period and dig their way out of the ground. The noisy clicking of the…

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Community-Building with Our Pool

Growing up in Oklahoma and Texas, summers were hot. My siblings and I loved nothing more than to head to our local…

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Exploring Self Image with What in the World is Wrong with Gisbert?

With the 2024 Summer Games about to kick off in Paris, children and adults are hyper-aware of how athletes look and…

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Gender Identity & The Dress in the Window

“Paint my fingers and toes, too, mommy!” pleaded my four year old son. “I want to be sparkly like the girls!”…

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Jitter Stick Spirituality

My kids have always been pretty good about settling down to do their homework. But after a half hour or so, first one…

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Books for Women’s History Month

I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads, ‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’. It’s a reminder to myself…

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When Kids See Life as a Quest

My son jumped excitedly from foot to foot as he waited impatiently for the clock to strike midnight. Our local…

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Winter Solstice Stories

For the Northern Hemisphere, winter officially begins on December 21st with the marking of the winter solstice. It’s…

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Creating a Calming Corner

December can be an overwhelming month for kids. Seasonal changes prompt a shift in clothing and outdoor activities.…

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Exploring Change with Where is Home, Daddy Bear?

My family moved when I was a child. For the first 6 months, I refused to call the new house ‘home’. I did not want…

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Resisting Bias with Brian the Brave

Children begin learning about differences at a young age. Figuring out how to categorize things is one of the ways they…

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Making Kindness a Goal

My social media feeds have been flooded with ‘first day of school’ photos. Children stand holding signs proclaiming…

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Exploring Identity with Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers

Sexism, racism, and classism are hard concepts for children to understand. Kids have a strong bias toward fairness and…

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Counting Kindness with Kids

Countless families and children become refugees when extreme poverty or violence force them to leave their homes. The…

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Seeing Differences through Eyes that Speak to the Stars

Children are often curious about differences. They wonder why someone has red hair instead of brown like them, or…

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Exploring Diversity & Community with Luli and the Language of Tea

Children from several nations gather in a playroom while their parents learn English as a Second Language next door.…

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Dreaming with Dreamers

Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales, follows a mother and her young child as they immigrate to the United States and begin to…

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Exploring The Coquíes Still Sing

I grew up in Oklahoma, where tornadoes are a common summer occurrence. My family would huddle in the basement as sirens…

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Exploring The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess

Fairy tales can play a powerful role in children’s lives. Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen has morphed into…

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Exploring Every Little Kindness with Kids

Sometimes a story doesn’t need words to be powerful. That’s the case with Marta Bartolj’s Every Little Kindness,…

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Exploring the Goodness of Most People

Stranger danger lessons, active shooter drills - these experiences can teach children that others are to be feared.…

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Exploring Values with The Good for Nothing Tree

I have a peach tree in my front yard. Some years, there are lots of peaches and we scramble to pick our share before…

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Connecting with Nature through My Friend Earth

Learning about the seasons of the year is a common focus in many preschool and elementary programs.  My Friend Earth,…

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Going on a Rainforest Adventure with Forest

Brendan Kearney’s Forest is part of a series that chronicles the adventures of fisher Finn and his dog, Skip. In this…

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Exploring the Gift of Rain with Sidney the Lonely Cloud

Like generations of children before them, my kids would chant, “Rain, rain, go away,” whenever raindrops threatened…

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Exploring Care for the Ocean with I Love You, Blue

My family lives close enough to the ocean that we can visit frequently. My children enjoy walking on the beach, playing…

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Exploring Bad Days with Everything Will Be OK

Some days are just yucky. Things happen that children can’t control and don’t like. They might be little things,…

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Exploring Fears with Bright Star

Fears are a part of childhood. Whether it’s worries about monsters under the bed, big dogs, loud noises, or parents…

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Books for Earth Day

Americans have celebrated Earth Day since 1970, with other nations joining in beginning in 1990. The theme for 2023 is…

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Talking about Lockdown Drills with One Thursday Afternoon

Lockdown (Active Shooter) Drills have become a staple of children’s lives. Schools and organizations build them into…

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Exploring A Million Views

My daughter loves creating videos. Lego movies inspire stop-action Lego shorts.  Super Bowl halftime shows prompt…

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Exploring Emotion with Crying is Like the Rain

Children’s feelings can shift and change rapidly. One minute a toddler is happily playing and the next they’re…

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Using Books as Spiritual Mirrors & Windows

As a preschooler, my daughter loved Don and Audrey Wood’s The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big…

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Exploring Loteria with Children

Daniel* wasn’t having much success lighting his campfire. Everything seemed stacked against him: too much wind, a…

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Exploring People Are Wild with Children

“Do they bite?” asked Marcus* when we spotted a family of mule deer during a camping trip. Our group was excited…

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Spiritual Themes in The Door of No Return

Lessons about slavery in the United States typically begin with life on a plantation in the American South.  This…

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Exploring Emotions with The Coat

Hand-me-downs can be a dreaded necessity or longed-for acquisition. I remember being crestfallen when a neighbor passed…

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Exploring Just Help! with Kids

How can children learn to build a better world? According to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the answer is in…

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Exploring Community Justice with Unfadeable

In Unfadeable, Bella Fades is a fierce tween girl who loves her community and wants to see it thrive. Her strong belief…

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Reading Small Town Pride With Kids

Small Town Pride stars a tween working to understand himself, change his community and gain autonomy over his own…

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Exploring Miss Quinces

Summer can often be a time of celebrations and reunions as family members and friends travel to see one another. In Kat…

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Talking about Ukraine with I Hate Borsch

Earlier this month, UNESCO added borsch, the national soup of Ukraine, to its list of endangered cultural heritage…

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Reading What Do You Do with a Chance?

Taking chances is risky. Some children can’t wait to explore the unknown. Others prefer familiar structures and…

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Identity Discussions with Alice Austen Lived Here

Sam and TJ have learned a lot about ‘Dead Straight Cisgender White Men’ in history. So when they have to research a…

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Exploring Magic Candies with Children

Imagine a bag of candies with the power to bring your sofa to life and give voice to falling leaves. Would you want to…

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Reading Simon and the Big, Bad, Angry Beasts

Disney’s popular movie, Turning Red, has called attention to how children struggle with big emotions, especially…

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Taking Flight with The Year We Learned to Fly

Cultural and spiritual heritages are often passed on to new generations through stories and teachings by elders.…

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Reading A Duet for Home

What can children do about a situation that seems unfair or unjust? How can they be allies? These are two of the…

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Books for Earth Day

Every year on April 22, more than a billion people take time to reflect on the earth and its importance for human…

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Exploring Ellen Outside the Lines

In their latest book, author A.J. Sass creates a neurodivergent main character (Ellen) who is negotiating changes in…

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Chapter Book Spirituality with Preschoolers

When my children were babies, I would read aloud from whatever book I had at hand to sooth them when they were fussy.…

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Exploring For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World

Like many parents, Michael W. Waters looked at his newborn son and thought him the most beautiful baby on earth. He…

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Spiritual ‘projects’ with Operation Sisterhood

Bo’s summer plans completely change when her mother moves into a Harlem brownstone with her fiance and another…

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Books Celebrating Black Identity

Children’s spiritual well-being depends, in part, on strong self-esteem. They need to see themselves as individuals…

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Spiritual Storytelling with The Last Cuentista

For a book lover like me, one bedtime story often turned into two or three as I tucked my young children in. But I…

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Exploring Where Wonder Grows

My dad collected rocks his whole life. He particularly liked geodes: rocks that - when broken open - contained a hidden…

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Reading Fauja Singh Keeps Going

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the 3rd Monday in January reminds us that society needs strong leaders:…

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Environmental Justice for Preschoolers

As global leaders gather in Glasgow to discuss climate change, one message is clear: environmental justice isn’t just…

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Reading The Proudest Blue

Wearing hijab is a spiritual statement for Muslim girls and women. It is a sign of faith and a practice of…

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Chapter Books about Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Older children often wonder about the reasons refugees and asylum seekers have left their homelands. They are able to…

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Change Sings

Social change can be scary for children (and adults). Much of parenting young children involves teaching them to obey…

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Picture Books about Refugees

With stories about refugees and immigrants frequently in the news, children are certain to wonder about why they’ve…

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Welcoming Afghan Refugees

Many of the refugees airlifted to the U.S. out of Afghanistan last month are currently housed at Fort Lee in Virginia,…

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Spiritual Story Books

My children love to read. From a young age, they knew that I would rarely deny their request to buy a book that caught…

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