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Full-Text Articles in Early Childhood Education
Walk In The Woods (2023) By Nikki Grimes, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Walk In The Woods (2023) By Nikki Grimes, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
An unnamed Black boy walks in the woods near his home a week after his father’s funeral. Because the boy knows how to be mindful in nature—to move slowly, step carefully, and pay close attention—he becomes more connected to the woods and the creatures in it. Rediscovering is his father’s legacy of ecstatic, aesthetic reverence for nature begins to assuage the boy's anger-tinged grief.
Boy Whose Head Was Filled With Stars: A Life Of Edwin Hubble (2021) By Isabelle Marinov, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Boy Whose Head Was Filled With Stars: A Life Of Edwin Hubble (2021) By Isabelle Marinov, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Barely a hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble changed the way we understand the universe and our place in it more dramatically than almost anyone else has ever done. As this picture book biography shows, his mind-boggling discoveries can be traced back to childhood questions. The discovery that the world is bigger than we had imagined happens in many ways, and learning that we have some choices in deciding how new facts, new experiences, and new perspectives can matter to us is a necessary part of education.
Possum That Didn't (1950/2016) By Arthur Frank Tashlin, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Peter Shea
Possum That Didn't (1950/2016) By Arthur Frank Tashlin, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Peter Shea
Picture Books
The possum ‘that didn’t’ is a very contented animal who smiles in sunshine and rain, but when a group of human picnickers spot him hanging by his tail, they read his smile as a frown and call him stupid for insisting that he is happy. They decide to take him to the city to find amusement and, because he won’t climb down from the tree, they excavate it and transport tree and hanging possum together. Frank Tashlin's book goes philosophical in two different directions. One is the direction of satire: We laugh at humans taking a possum to a nightclub, …
Aquariam (2018) By Cynthia Alonso, Samantha Piede
Aquariam (2018) By Cynthia Alonso, Samantha Piede
Picture Books
When the protagonist of Cynthia Alonso's Aquarium discovers a small, orange fish has splashed onto her neighborhood pier, she delightedly attempts to realize her dream of living amongst marine life. She decides to build a new home for it -- a human-sized aquarium -- in her living room. However, her earnestness is not enough to make this space a true home for the fish. Samantha Piede's Thinking in Stories review highlights several ethical and epistemological questions raised by this wordless narrative. What can we know of the needs and desires of species other than our own? What are the ethical …
I’M In Charge Of Celebrations (1986) By Byrd Baylor, Maughn Rollins Gregory
I’M In Charge Of Celebrations (1986) By Byrd Baylor, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
The young woman speaking to us from this beautiful book shows us a way of honoring and celebrating singular experiences we have in the natural world, and how doing this could enrich the meaning of our lives. She describes them in a notebook, marks their dates, and gives them names. Think of this as what ancient Greek philosophers called a “spiritual exercise”— something we do to strengthen our ability to pay attention, to heighten our sense of the beauty and dignity of the natural world, and to better understand our place in it. Of course, moments worth celebrating can happen …
How Beautiful (2021) By Antonella Capetti, Maughn Rollins Gregory
How Beautiful (2021) By Antonella Capetti, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
The question of what is and isn’t beautiful occurs to the caterpillar in this elaborate picture book when a giant Unknown Thing (human) lifts him out of his familiar leaf bed world and tells him, “You’re so beautiful.” The caterpillar wonders, “But what does beautiful mean?” The question leads him on a day-long trek through the forest, where other animals offer a variety of perplexing answers.
Depth Of The Lake And The Height Of The Sky (2017) By Kim Jihyun, Megan Jane Laverty
Depth Of The Lake And The Height Of The Sky (2017) By Kim Jihyun, Megan Jane Laverty
Picture Books
The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky (2017) is KimJihyun’s first picture book; it is composed entirely of pictures. It “tells” the story of a young boy and his dog who spend a day swimming and sunbathing at a lake that is within walking distance from his grandparents' home, whom he is visiting with his parents. At first glance, the story might seem unremarkable, recounting an experience familiar to many. However, Kim’s illustrations challenge this assumption by drawing us into the boy’s encounter with nature. She creates a visual journey that guides us through a perceptual …
I'M Trying To Love Garbage (2021) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea
I'M Trying To Love Garbage (2021) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea
Picture Books
Bethany Barton writes great books for kids about how minds change. In this one, the character’s arc is from thinking about garbage as just smelly icky stuff through empathizing (a little) with the creatures that feed on garbage, to eventually coming to see that all garbage is not equal; some needs special handling or it will clutter life up for a long time. The conclusion: I want to act like someone who thinks more about garbage, about what trash I create and where it ends up.”
How To Be A Nature Detective (1966) By Millicent E. Selsam, Maughn Rollins Gregory
How To Be A Nature Detective (1966) By Millicent E. Selsam, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Coming up with the most reasonable explanation of the available clues is something we all do on a daily basis. This book describes animal tracks as clues from which children can make inferences about what kind of animal left them and what they were doing when they did.
Grasshoppers, Ants, And Philosophical Fables, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Grasshoppers, Ants, And Philosophical Fables, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Aesop contrasted the ant’s virtues of industry, forward planning, and group loyalty with the idleness of a cicada interested only in merry-making and music-making. That contrast is challenged in many picture book versions of his fable. What does it mean to work? What is the value of making music and art? Can finding delight in an occupation be as important as denying gratification? When is it right to refuse help to someone who asks for it? This review compares six picture books—Ant and Grasshopper by Luli Gray (2011), The Ant and the Grasshopper by Amy Lowry Poole (2000), The …
Sidewalk Flowers (2015) By Jonarno Lawson, Samantha Piede
Sidewalk Flowers (2015) By Jonarno Lawson, Samantha Piede
Picture Books
JonArno Lawson's Sidewalk Flowers centers on a little girl accompanying her father on a morning walk across a grey landscape. On the way, she spots dandelions sprouting out of the pavement. The protagonist's attention to this tiny, beautiful detail catalyzes her expanding appreciation for the rest of her environment, spurring her to notice beauty in unexpected places. This review suggests that Sidewalk Flowers richly introduces children to the philosophical theme of attention not with words, but with color.
Buzzing With Questions: The Inquisitive Mind Of Charles Henry Turner (2019) By Janice N. Harrington, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Buzzing With Questions: The Inquisitive Mind Of Charles Henry Turner (2019) By Janice N. Harrington, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Do insects have minds? Are they creative? Can they tell time? Can they learn from experience? As a young boy, Charles Henry Turner couldn’t stop asking such questions and his curiosity-fueled intellect led him to become the first African American admitted to the St. Louis Academy of Science and one of the first entomologist to study insect behavior. By designing ingenious experiments, Turner proved that bees see color, that spiders can spin webs around artificial obstacles, that cockroaches can learn to navigate a maze, and that moths can be trained to beat their wings when a whistle blows. This insightful …
What Is A River? (2021) By Monika Vaicenavičiene, Maughn Rollins Gregory
What Is A River? (2021) By Monika Vaicenavičiene, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Monika Vaicenavičienė’s lush picture book What is a River? nudges us to contemplate our interconnection with living things and natural cycles, and with human history and culture. It relates a conversation between a grandmother and a young adult grandchild enjoying a picnic on a riverbank. Noticing that the river’s surface reflection of trees and flowers along its banks hides its lower depths (“Just like people”), the grandchild asks, “Grandma, what is a river?” The grandmother’s many responses do more than help her grandchild appreciate multiple meanings and values of rivers; they demonstrate how interesting some things become if we keep …
Does Earth Feel? (2021) By Marc Majewski, Alaina Gostomski
Does Earth Feel? (2021) By Marc Majewski, Alaina Gostomski
Picture Books
With spare prose and evocative paintings, author-illustrator Marc Majewski asks fourteen critical questions -- including Does Earth feel calm? Does Earth feel curious? Does Earth feel hurt? Does Earth feel heard? -- to encourage active thinking and discussion about our planet.
Encyclopedia Of Gardening For Colored Children (2024) By Jamaica Kincaid, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Encyclopedia Of Gardening For Colored Children (2024) By Jamaica Kincaid, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
In relating the origins, biological features, and uses of several familiar and unfamiliar plants, this Encyclopedia simultaneously offers a primer on colonialism, slavery, and genocide. Adults sharing this book with children should be led by children’s curiosity, but should also help them cultivate a vocabulary and historical understanding of oppression.
Simone (2024) By Viet Thanh Nguyen, Peter Shea
Simone (2024) By Viet Thanh Nguyen, Peter Shea
Picture Books
When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey. Coziness and comfort disappear in an instant, without much warning, as wildfires threaten peaceful neighborhoods and families seek makeshift shelters, with little hope of going back to normal. Joined by other children sheltering in the gym, Simone, a budding artist, encourages everyone to draw as a way to process their situation.
Blackout (2011) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Blackout (2011) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Picture Books
In this Caldecott Honor Book, Blackout, a hot urban night takes an interesting turn when the power goes out and an urban family -- each busy with something that requires electricity -- discover new things about themselves and their community.
Hurricane (2021) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Hurricane (2021) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Picture Books
This book pictures the devastation of today's powerful storms. The hurricane wrecks things and drives people from their homes. The boy in the story finds his beloved dock broken up, where he used to swim and fish. The story centers on cooperation and neighborhood resilience: people can get through disasters if they work together.
Something, Someday (2023) By Amanda Gorman, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Something, Someday (2023) By Amanda Gorman, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
When children think philosophically they inevitably will, and unquestionably should engage in social criticism. In this picture book by the first U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, a Black child in an urban apartment complex surrounded by garbage cleans it up and plants a vegetable and flower garden, enlisting the help of others and overcoming some setbacks. Gorman's text warns children that some adults may say they're too small, or that it’s none of their business, or that what they're trying won’t work, but she reassures them that sometimes it’s OK to ignore those people.
I'M Trying To Love Spiders (2019) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea
I'M Trying To Love Spiders (2019) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea
Picture Books
This is one member of a series of books about trying to love things. In funny and engaging prose, it explores this important, usually neglected, action several ways, not all of which are successful for the narrator, whose 'natural' response to spiders is squashing. It opens lots of questions about getting beyond our first impulses.
Blizzard (2014) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Blizzard (2014) By John Rocco, Peter Shea
Picture Books
Based on the author’s childhood experience, this book tells the story of a boy seeing his neighborhood transformed into an alien landscape by a superstorm and finding ways to get around in it when adults cannot. The book invites readers to re-see “normal” lives and to reconsider what is possible.
We Are Water Protectors (2020) By Carole Lindstrom, Peter Shea
We Are Water Protectors (2020) By Carole Lindstrom, Peter Shea
Picture Books
We Are Water Protectors is a beautiful and partisan book, and the teacher or parent who wants to help children to think better could not find a better place to start, giving the child of whatever age the opportunity to feel the force of this plea, and then to recognize the need to understand the political context within which this issue arises, and the honest differences of opinion about policy that arise in an already disrupted world.
Big Fur Secret (1944) By Margaret Wise Brown, Peter Shea
Big Fur Secret (1944) By Margaret Wise Brown, Peter Shea
Picture Books
This little-known book by Margaret Wise Brown follows a boy as he watches animals in a zoo, first just observing, then having fantasies about them: of putting squirrels in his pocket, lying down beside the panda, hugging the polar bear. But he always interrupts his fantasy: the squirrel wouldn’t like to be put in a pocket; he knows better than to lie down next to a panda or to hug a polar bear. The Big Fur Secret is importantly about animals, and about zoos, and about the ways people integrate defenseless beings into their projects and plots. But it is …
Becoming A Good Creature (2020) By Sy Montgomery, Samantha Piede
Becoming A Good Creature (2020) By Sy Montgomery, Samantha Piede
Picture Books
Becoming a Good Creature outlines moral lessons Sy Montgomery has learned from interactions with animals, both domestic and wild, such as “Love Little Lives,” “Don’t Be Afraid,” and “Make Your Own Family.” Our willingness to be attentive to other creatures – not just the ones like us with “two legs,” but also “four or even eight” – opens up the possibility of finding something ethically significant in these encounters. She tells us that “all have taught me something important about how to be a good creature in the world.”
Greta Thunberg (2021) By Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Greta Thunberg (2021) By Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
Greta Thunberg learned about climate change in school at the age of eight, when she persuaded her parents to make lifestyle changes to reduce their carbon footprint. At fifteen, after winning a writing competition about the environment, she came up with the idea of a school strike, inspired by student walkouts in the United States to protest legislative inaction on gun control. Though she couldn’t interest anyone else in the idea, her one-child strikes soon gained international attention. Greta’s story demonstrates some of the challenges and gifts that neurodiverse children bring to activism. This book also prods adults to think …
Ugly Place (2022) By Laura Deal, Samantha Piede
Ugly Place (2022) By Laura Deal, Samantha Piede
Picture Books
Many of us can recall moments when we were stopped dead in our tracks and experienced selfless awe – sometimes in nature, sometimes in art, sometimes in the beauty of another person. The inarticulacy of these moments may present an interesting philosophical struggle for both children and adults trying to capture these phenomena. Still, the recognition that these moments are possible – and ethically significant – presents opportunities for rich discussion. The Ugly Place highlights the importance of moments in which we are reminded that we are not, in fact, the center of the universe – for it is more …
Lorax (1971) By Dr. Seuss, Megan Jane Laverty
Lorax (1971) By Dr. Seuss, Megan Jane Laverty
Picture Books
Megan Jane Laverty interprets Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (the 1971 book, the 1972 television cartoon, and the 2012 feature film) as a multi-layered philosophical fable. First, she examines how the story reveals the dangers of our enthusiastic but short-sighted pursuit of innovation, success, and wealth—ambitions that can lead to far-reaching and often tragic consequences. Secondly, she explores how the narrative vividly illustrates the environmental devastation that results when commercial enterprises treat nature as an inexhaustible resource for production and progress. Laverty proposes several ways for students to engage with the story’s philosophical themes, including the aesthetic exploration of their local …
Owl Moon (1987) By Jane Yolen, Peter Shea
Owl Moon (1987) By Jane Yolen, Peter Shea
Picture Books
A father and daughter go out together at night to visit an owl. This simple story opens discussions about what fathers owe their children, about what humans owe to wild creatures, and about going outside our comfort zones – what we owe ourselves, as multi-dimensional beings enclosed in just one small life. The pictures take the reader along on this simple and astonishing adventure, a model perhaps for how adults can sometimes be helpful to children.
Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, And Environmental Pioneer (2019) By Danica Novgorodoff, Peter Shea
Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, And Environmental Pioneer (2019) By Danica Novgorodoff, Peter Shea
Picture Books
As a young boy, Alexander Von Humboldt came up with divergent questions about the birds and mountains and animals he saw, and brought all those questions together under two big questions that stayed important for him over a long life: “How are these things different?” and “How are they nevertheless connected?” As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say: “They are different, and yet they are connected.” This idea is much bigger than …
Snail With The Right Heart (2021) By Maria Popova, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Snail With The Right Heart (2021) By Maria Popova, Maughn Rollins Gregory
Picture Books
When a London scientist found a garden snail whose shell that spiraled left to right—opposite from others of its species—he sent it to the University of Nottingham for study. The snail’s internal organs were also arranged on the opposite side from other snails, including a heart on the right side of its body—a one-in-a-million condition known as situs inversus, which also occurs in humans. In explaining the snail’s story in terms of genetic evolution and biological reproduction, The Snail with the Right Heart also raises philosophical questions about the role of genetics, education, and personal choice in determining who …