3 Life Lessons From Picture Books…PragmaticMom : PragmaticMom

3 Life Lessons From Picture Books…

July 25, 2010

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Picture Books Teach Life Lessons

This is a nice blog with tagline: Where Grandmas Bond, Brag and Benefit. Don’t you just love that? Here Pam Allyn shares her love of books with her granddaughter — a love that helps teach her grandchildren a sense of empathy, a sense of community, and ignites a child’s imagination. Thanks for the great post and great picture book picks!

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From GaGa Sisterhood. For complete article, please click here.

“Reading is one of my great pleasures in life. I’ve nurtured the love of books in my granddaughters by always bringing a bag of library books to read to them when I visit. Their parents also read to them everyday. When I read an article by Pam Allyn on the value of reading, I thought it was so insightful I invited her to write a guest post.

Pam Allyn is the Executive Director of LitLife, a nationally recognized organization specializing in transformative school improvement through literacy education. Pam is the author of an inspirational and practical book for parents, teachers, and caregivers entitled What to Read When, which was published by Penguin in April 2009. She lives in Hastings on Hudson, New York with her husband Jim and two daughters Katie and Charlotte, as well as their dog Emily Dickinson and cat Eleanor Roosevelt.

Reading Helps Cultivate Empathy

Reading a book is a unique opportunity to see the world from another person or thing’s perspective. When a child reads a book, whether it is a fantastical story about an object come to life or a very real article about a neighboring country, he or she becomes a part of that world and sees life, however briefly, through the eyes of another. Children are uniquely able to accept and invest in the reality created in what they are reading. Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco is one book that can help cultivate empathy. In this book, Polacco shows how friendship can cross racial and generational lines, as she reminds us to always strive for truth and justice for ourselves and others.

By reading varied stories and texts from diverse authors, our children are exposed to the unique points of view of many different people and learn to empathize with people in situations contrasting greatly from their own. Another wonderful book for thinking about empathy is Roni Schotter’s Mama, I’ll Give You the World. In this lovely story a girl wants to give her mother a very special gift. As stories like this one demonstrate, empathetic people are kinder to others and listen more carefully to those around them. It is a wonderful gift books can give.”