May/June 2006
Empowering Children to Discover Their Ethics
Robyn Shtulman
In Habits of Goodness: Case Studies in the Social Curriculum, Ruth Sidney Charney discusses classroom teachers’ "struggle to integrate ethical practice into our daily fare" (Charney xiv). The idea is not to indoctrinate children with the adult’s views, but to open up the conversation so that the child can think and develop his or her own (Charney xvi). In this article I hope to highlight some of the many high quality, thoughtful, and entertaining picture books available that can help teachers and other adults start conversations with children and help children begin to develop their own inner ethical sense.
I was inspired to use empowering children as the subject of this annotated bibliography by an experience our youngest child had as a result of reading Hope, by Randy Houk. This is a true story about Hope, a factory farm pig tossed into a dumpster after injuring her leg. Our daughter was 4 when she chose this book at the library. Knowing what it was about, I hesitated to read it to her. I thought she would be very upset by the treatment of the farm animals, and I wasn’t sure how I would be able to explain such routine cruelty to this young child whose life had been so safe to that point. To my great surprise, though she was upset, the book became a favorite. Once she discovered that the book was true, and the Farm Sanctuary a real place, the farm and the rescued animals occupied her thoughts. She wanted to know how they were doing. Together we wrote a letter to the Farm Sanctuary, and they sent back pictures of happy pigs living out their lives comfortably. Our daughter then emptied her piggy bank to buy pig food, and we are planning a family trip to visit the farm. Reading this picture book stimulated our child’s social awareness and a desire to help. The experience has left her feeling powerful and eager to do more to help others.
The emphasis of the books in this bibliography is on telling children the truth about the world’s problems without terrorizing them, enabling them to come up with ideas & ways that they can really help, as children. These stories introduce several layers of action, from helping a friend, expressing compassion, and helping the larger world, to making amends for wrongs committed. It is easy to overwhelm children with the problems of the world. Instead, I offer this bibliography of stories that empower children by helping them realize that even the actions of a child, or group of children, have an impact.
As children grow up, they gradually begin to see the world outside of themselves and their families. Picture books can help them decide how they will create roles for themselves as part of that larger world. An interest in the wider world, and compassion for its inhabitants, is often first experienced through a love of animals. Eve Bunting’s Night Tree is a beautiful and quiet book that is appropriate for children who are beginning to take an interest in the welfare of those around them. In Night Tree, a family makes its annual pilgrimage into the woods to decorate an evergreen tree with food for the forest animals at Christmastime. Ted Rand’s paintings are full of quiet joy and chilliness at the same time.
Another picture book that children may be able to relate to is Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen, by Anne DiSalvo Ryan. In this story, the close relationship of a boy with his uncle that leads him to consider the lives of people around him and the role he might play in the wider world. The boy spends the day with Uncle Willie in the soup kitchen where he works preparing and serving food for the hungry. The boy moves from apprehension and mild derision to appreciation and understanding for the people who come to eat and help at the community kitchen. He also is empowered, as his help as a volunteer in the kitchen really does make a difference. Bagels from Benny (Davis 2003) also beautifully opens the same discussion. Benny loves his grandfather’s bagel’s, and wants to thank God for them. Because he doesn’t know where to find God, he leaves bagels in the synagogue, with the Torah. For weeks he thinks that God is actually eating the bagels. This is a lighthearted but deeply meaningful book about ways of giving thanks for our good fortune.
In Mrs. Katz and Tush, by Patricia Polacco, the reader is introduced to the immense impact a simple kind friendship can have. Mrs. Katz is a lonely widow, and Larnel a young boy who lives in the neighborhood. A kitten in need of a home provides the bridge needed to link them, in a loving friendship that eventually lasts all of both their lives. Despite differences in their ages, ethnicities, and religions, each discovers that the other is “such a person” (Polacco unpaged). In Me and Mr. Mah, by Andrea Spalding, a boy with newly divorced parents and his elderly neighbor form a friendship that helps each of them through their loneliness. The Summer my Father was Ten (Brisson 1998) touches on similar themes of intergenerational friendship.
Books such as The Lorax (Seuss 1971), The Never-Ending Greenness (Waldman 1997), Miss Runphius (Cooney 1982), Something Beautiful (Wyeth 1998), and The Great Trash Bash (Leedy 1991) encourage readers to examine their responsibility for their own surroundings. Other books, such as Magical Hands (Baker 1989), Nobody Knew What to Do (McCain 2001), The Christmas Menorahs (Cohn 1995), Smoky Night (Bunting 1994), and What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street (Rael 1996) are about the interrelationships of friends and strangers that either make or break a community. In Smoky Night and Christmas Menorahs, people from diverse backgrounds come to know each other and discover that they are safer and emotionally richer when neighbors look out for one another. In Nobody Knew What to Do, a boy decides what his role will be when a bully threatens kids in his school. In What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street, a young girl discovers complex adult relationships and the web of anonymous support that keeps her community going. Magical Hands is about the magic of friendship and the power of small good deeds.
Two books speak directly to children about the results of their own behavior. Peace Begins with You (Scholes 1990) is an almost poetic work that details the ways an individual, even a child, can add to the peacefulness of the world. In The Summer My Father was Ten (Brisson 1998), a group of boys unthinkingly destroys an elderly neighbor’s vegetable garden. They hardly realize what they are doing, and then it is done. Heartbroken by what he sees as the cruelty of the boys, Mr. Bellavista doesn’t plant a garden the following year until one of the boys apologizes and helps him clear and plant. Their friendship grows through the years and leads to the boy’s ritual annual planting of his own garden as a reminder of making amends.
These are but a small few of the many varied books that adults can share with children. Key, I believe, is the willingness to be interrupted by the children’s thoughts and questions, and to hold one’s own tongue, at least at first, until the children have had a chance to think things through.
Works Cited
Annotated Bibliography
Barker, Marjorie. Magical Hands. Picture Book Studio 1989.
Brisson, Pat. The summer my father was ten. Honsdale, Pa. : Caroline House/Boyds Mills Press, 1998.
Bunting, Eve. Night Tree, San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.
Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. San Diego : Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Charney, Ruth Sidney, ed. Habits of Goodness: Case Studies in the Social Curriculum, Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children, 1997.
Cohn, Janice. The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate. Morton Grove, Ill.: A. Whitman, 1995.
Cooney, Barbara. Miss Rumphius, New York : Viking Press, 1982.
Davis, Aubrey. Bagels from Benny, Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2003.
DiSalvo-Ryan. Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen, New York : Mulberry Books, 1997.
Houk, Randy. Hope, Connecticut : The Benefactory, 1995.
Leedy, Loreen. The Great Trash Bash, New York : Holiday House, 1991.
McCain, Becky Ray. Nobody Knew What to Do: A Story About Bullying. Illinois : Albert Whitman & Company, 2001.
Polacco, Patricia. Mrs. Katz and Tush, New York : Dell, 1992.
Rael, Elsa. What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1996.
Scholes, Katherine. Peace Begins with You. San Francisco: Little, Brown, 1990.
Seuss, Dr. The Lorax, New York, Random House [1971].
Spalding, Andrea. Me and Mr. Mah. Washington: Orca Book Publishers, 1999.
Waldman, Neil. The Never-Ending Greenness, New York: Morrow Junior Books 1997.
Wyeth, Sharon Dennis. Something Beautiful, New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1998.
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Robin Shtulman is a librarian at Erving (Mass.) Elementary School.
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