Picture Books

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  Becoming a Good Creature (2020) by Sy Montgomery

  Samantha Piede

  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.”

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  Big Fur Secret (1944) by Margaret Wise Brown

  Maughn Gregory

  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 also about consciousness in a more general way: it encourages the reader (or listener) to stop short of speaking for somebody (or something) else – to hold on to the idea that how it is for us may be quite different from how it is for them.

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  Big Tracks, Little Tracks: Following Animal Prints (1999) by Millicent E. Selsam

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  Blackout (2011) by John Rocco

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  Blizzard (2014) by John Rocco

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  Boy Named Isamu (2021) by James Yang

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  Author-illustrator James Yang imagines a day in the life of the artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) as a young child whose curiosity and sensitivity lead him to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of his surroundings.

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  Boy Whose Head was Filled with Stars: A Life of Edwin Hubble (2021) by Isabelle Marinov

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  Cat Way (2024) by Sara Lundberg

  Maughn Gregory

  When a human gives her cat a turn to lead the way on their daily walk, they encounter the unexpected. The philosophical quandaries this story raises – When do routines become too confining? How do domestic habits prevent us from experiencing the natural world? Can humans and pets have genuinely inter-species relationships? – can be discussed and experimented with by people of most ages.

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  Does Earth Feel? (2021) by Marc Majewski

  Alaina Gostomski

  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.

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  Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children (2024) by Jamaica Kincaid

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  Feathers Together (2022) by Caron Levis

  Maughn Gregory

  Feathers Together tells the story of a mated couple of white storks who live and migrate together between Croatia and South Africa, until the female is wounded and can no longer fly. An elderly man builds a rooftop nest for them with a walkway for the injured female and cares for her when the male migrates. On one level, this story is standard animal fable that conveys truths and moral values about the human condition. But the book’s afterword, explaining that this is a true story, raises philosophical questions about the emotional lives of wild animals, the ethics of hunting and caring for them, and the possibilities of cross-species relationships.

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  Grasshoppers, Ants, and Philosophical Fables

  Maughn Gregory

  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 Ants and the Grasshopper by Rebecca Emberley (2012), The Grasshopper & the Ants by Jerry Pinkney (2015), The Grasshopper's Song: An Aesop’s Fable Revisited by Nikki Giovanni (2008), and Who’s Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? by Toni & Slade Morrison (2003)—that, together, turn Aesop’s fable into a philosophical quest.

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  Greta Thunberg (2021) by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

  Maughn Gregory

  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 of social change as children’s work, and to join them in strategizing and risk assessment.

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  How Beautiful (2021) by Antonella Capetti

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  How to Be a Nature Detective (1966) by Millicent E. Selsam

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  Hurricane (2021) by John Rocco

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  I'm Trying to Love Garbage (2021) by Bethany Barton

  Maughn Gregory

  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.”

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

  Maughn Gregory

  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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  Simone (2024) by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  Something, Someday (2023) by Amanda Gorman

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  Walk in the Woods (2023) by Nikki Grimes

  Maughn Gregory

  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.

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  We Are WaterProtectors (2020) by Carole Lindstrom

  Maughn Gregory

  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.