Chapter Books

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  Fiona’s Bee (1975) by Beverly Keller

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Young Fiona saves her money to buy a dog dish, which she puts on her front porch and fills with water every day, hoping to make friends with a dog who might stop by for a drink, and with its human walker. But when a bee lands in the water and nearly drowns, Fiona's rescue results in her making a whole group of new friends in an unexpected way. Beverly Keller's delightfully offbeat story nudges us to think about what kind of respect we owe to creatures like bees, what kinds of animals can be pets, and what the limits are, or should be, on keeping animals as pets.

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  Higher Power of Lucky (2008) by Susan Patron

  Maughn Gregory

  Ten-year-old Lucky lost her mother in a freak accident; her father is missing, and she is being cared for by her father’s former girlfriend in a tiny town at the edge of the Mojave desert. That could be the set-up for a story of loss and poverty. But this girl lives up to her name: she takes scraps of information, chance experiences, and overheard theories as resources for imagining the world and plotting her way forward. She learns how things work from the desert animals and insects, with the help of her hero, Charles Darwin. She learns survival and a good attitude from her quirky neighbors, becoming a first-rate self-educator and independent thinker.

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  Hundred Dresses (1944) by Eleanor Estes

  Peter Shea

  Wanda Petronski was a poor Polish girl who lived with her father and brother. She had only one dress to wear to school but told the other girls in her class that she had a hundred dresses at home. Disbelieving her, those girls teased Wanda continually, until she and her family eventually moved out of town. When the class learned that Wanda had won an art award in absentia, they regretted their teasing and sent her a letter of apology, which resulted in an intriguing gesture of reconciliation. Moral development involves the moral imagination, which requires thinking oneself into the lives of others. One of the best ways to develop one’s moral imagination is to read good literature like The Hundred Dresses and reflect on it.

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  My Octopus Teacher (2020) directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

  Peter Shea

  My Octopus Teacher combines a carefully structured love story with astonishing information about undersea life, documenting a year of encounters between a photographer and an octopus. It is important as a non-standard love story and as a reflection on the possibility of deep connection with non-human creatures.

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  Ozma of Oz (1907) by L. Frank Baum

  Maughn B. Gregory

  L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz is a splendid tale of intellectual adventure full of thought experiments, including a tree that bears lunch boxes and napkins as fruit, beings like humans but with wheels at the ends of their four limbs, a mechanical man (called “Tiktok”) who can think, speak, and act but is not alive, and a princess with thirty alternative heads and accompanying temperaments. One could base a whole philosophy course on Ozma of Oz. One can also read it simply for fun – including, of course, philosophical fun.

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  Real Thief (1973) by William Steig

  Gareth B. Matthews

  First, it is rubies that disappear from the Royal Treasury, then gold ducats, then the famous Kalikak diamond. King Basil, the bear, suspects Gawain, the goose, the Chief Guard of the Royal Treasury, who is brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to prison. But the mouse, Derek, a friend of Gawain, is the real thief. What should he do now? The philosophical value of Steig’s story extends even beyond the opportunity it affords for discussing what makes something right. Since much of the story is written from the thief’s point of view, reading it is an exercise in the moral imagination. Steig’s story is that rarity among children’s books—an exploration of moral questions that manages to be exciting and serious, without ever being moralistic.

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  Upside-Down Cat (1981) Elizabeth Parsons

  Maughn Gregory

  Lily Black, nicknamed the “Upside-Down Cat” from her habit of lying on her back over a hot-air register to keep warm, lives with Joe and his parents in New York City and summers with them in Maine. When she disappears at the end of one summer, Joe and his family have no choice but to return to New York without her. A kind lobsterman finds Lily, takes care of her all winter, and becomes fond of her. The next summer, when Joe finds Lily on the man’s boat, they have to decide whom Lily really belongs to—if anyone.