Picture Books

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  Albert’s Impossible Toothache (1974) by Barbara Williams

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Albert is a turtle, who complains that he has a toothache. Albert’s father is quite unsympathetic. “That’s impossible,” he says; “it is impossible for anyone in our family to have a toothache.” Though Albert’s father does point to his own toothless mouth (does he also point to its toothlessness?) to establish the impossibility of a turtle’s having a toothache, he never actually says to Albert, “To have a toothache you need to have a tooth and turtles don’t have teeth.”

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  Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer (2019) by Danica Novgorodoff

  Peter Shea

  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 “ecology”. For Humboldt, it was a key to making sense of experience generally. It’s is a way of thinking worth exploring in discussion: acknowledge difference, then find connection.

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  Aquariam (2018) by Cynthia Alonso

  Samantha Piede

  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 ramifications of presuming animals want the same things we do?

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  Bear Outside (2021) by Jane Yolan

  Maughn Gregory

  “Some folks have a lion inside, or a tiger. Not me. I wear my bear on the outside.” The young protagonist of Jane Yolan’s 400^th book for children is able to take risks and ignore bullies, not by putting on a ferocious countenance, but by summoning the persona of a giant, friendly bear, that might be an imaginary playmate or a representation of her inner courage. If I wore a bear outside today, what would I do differently? But this story also shows that even young children experience disagreement among their inner selves with different, sometimes conflicting tendencies, needs, genders, skills. Bear Outside is a philosophical fable that, like all good fables, raises intriguing questions that can be doorways to wisdom.

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  Bear that Wasn't (1946/2010) by Arthur Frank Tashlin

  Gareth B. Matthews

  What happens when a bear wakes from hibernation to find his forest home has been replaced by a human factory? What if the bear can't convince the factory workers, vice presidents, or president that he is, in deed, a bear and shouldn't be put to work in the factory? In reviewing Frank Tashlin's The Bear that Wasn't, Gareth B. Matthews discovers philosophical themes including dreaming and skepticism, being and nonbeing, appearance and reality, and the foundations of knowledge.

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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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  Bee-Man of Orn (1883/1986) by Frank R. Stockton

  Gareth B. Matthews

  In the country of Orn there lived an old man who inhabited a house full of beehives. One day a sorcerer informed the Bee-man that he had been transformed from some other kind of creature and should be changed back. The Bee-man set out on a journey to discover his original form and, after rescuing a baby from a dragon, realized he had been transformed from a baby. The sorcerer made him a baby again, who was raised by the rescued baby’s mother. Many years later, the sorcerer returned to Orn and discovered that the baby had grown up to become a Bee-man again. The story invites us to ask of others and of ourselves, whether they or we could have turned out very differently. If we can imagine having another native language or having different friends, can we imagine having a very different personality, with different beliefs, desires, and memories?

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  Big Fur Secret (1944) by Margaret Wise Brown

  Peter Shea

  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 Rollins 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 Rollins 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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  Burglar Bill (1979) by Allan and Janet Ahlberg

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Burglar Bill lives alone with a house full of stolen property. Every night after supper he goes off to work, stealing things. Every dawn he comes home with his sack full of stolen goods and sits down to his breakfast of stolen toast and marmalade and stolen coffee. Some of my favorite children’s stories are written in a style I call “philosophical whimsy.” In the story of Burglar Bill, the whimsy is aimed at encouraging us to think about the life of a full-time thief as if it were an almost boringly normal sort of middleclass life. The story invites us to see thieves as wayward human beings, rather than as monsters or madmen. This message may strike some readers as sentimental. On the other hand, the demonization of criminality so common in our society keeps us from recognizing the humanity we share with thieves and helps us to ignore or disguise some of the darker motivations we might otherwise find within ourselves as well.

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  Buzzing with Questions: The Inquisitive Mind of Charles Henry Turner (2019) by Janice N. Harrington

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  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 picture-book biography helps young readers trace the knowledge we find in science textbooks backwards through a process of experimental inquiry, to its source in human questioning. It also provokes important questions about the ethics of animal experiments.

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  Cat Way (2024) by Sara Lundberg

  Maughn Rollins 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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  Dead Bird (1965/2016) by Margaret Wise Brown

  Peter Shea

  Children come upon a bird that has just died. It is still warm. They bury it, sing a song they have made up, and plant flowers. They visit the grave every day to put fresh flowers on it and to sing to the bird, until they forget. Margaret Wise Brown’s The Dead Bird is a story about how a new ritual happens, spontaneously, out of a shared experience of grief, expressing a shared reverence for one kind of life. The children are thinking, in a way: they are keeping something in mind for a long time, in a beautiful form. But their thinking is not investigation; it doesn’t make the kind of progress that an argument makes. Matthew Lipman’s starting question for philosophic discussion was always, “What’s worth talking about, here?” The Dead Bird may require more restraint from leaders than other stories, so that children can find their own ways into the realities of meaning-making and grief and poetry and shared experience. Different groups may find very different things worth talking about, in this small and exquisite story.

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  Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky (2017) by Kim Jihyun

  Megan Jane Laverty

  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 shift--one that inspires wonder at the extraordinariness of existence.

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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 Rollins 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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  Enemy: A Book About Peace (2007) by Davide Cali;

  Maria Zbroy

  Every person, society, and ethnic community builds its worldview on the basis of comparing in-group and out-group, the boundaries of which are variable. The one who seems closest to us may be a complete stranger. And someone who comes from afar, who belongs to a completely different community or nation, can become the closest person. Only we determine who is our friend and who is our enemy. In Davide Cali’s allegory about modern warfare and other kinds of conflict, two soldiers who have never seen each other shoot at each other from inside their trenches until one decides to take a daring chance.

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  Feathers Together (2022) by Caron Levis

  Maughn Rollins 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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  Gibberish (2022) by Young Vo

  Peter Shea

  Everyone sometimes doesn’t understand what is going on, can’t find a way in, and everyone in that situation has impulses to retreat and to growl. Gibberish takes the point of view of the newcomer, the non-native speaker. One of the virtues of this presentation is that many people will say: yes, that’s what it was like – when I started school; the first day of my new job; when I first opened the chemistry book; when I landed in Vienna; as the first person in my family to go to college; when I started playing violin. And that common topic invites philosophically interesting strategizing: how does one find one’s way into a bewildering situation? What does one do with the upwelling feeling of having fallen into a vat of monsters? There are also great strategy questions from the other side: as a sympathetic insider, how does one diminish strangeness, find bravery to confront one’s discomfort, find common things, begin to put the common world in order?

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  Grasshoppers, Ants, and Philosophical Fables

  Maughn Rollins 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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  Great Blueness and Other Predicaments (1968) by Arnold Lobel

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Long ago, there was no color in the world. It was the time of The Great Greyness. Down in the cellar of his house a Wizard mixed up something in a pot and used it to paint the thatched roof of his house. “I call it blue,” he told his neighbors, who begged him to share it. Soon the whole world was blue. It became the time of The Great Blueness. Unfortunately, having blueness everywhere made people sad. So, the Wizard went back down into his cellar and came out with something new .... Philosophy is colorful! Plenty of philosophers and scientists have told us that colors are not real. Others have made puzzles out of logical statements about color. And what does it mean that some colors made up of others?

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  Greta Thunberg (2021) by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

  Maughn Rollins 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 Rollins 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 Rollins 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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  How War Changed Rondo (2021) by Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  In this evocative picture book, ‘War’ is a proper name, referring not to an event but to a malevolent being, depicted as a gigantic, shape-shifting amalgamation of buildings, war machines, and a mechanical human arm from which emerge tanks with eyes and jagged mouths, mosquito-like helicopters, and other “terrible clinking and hissing machines.” Nor does War seem to have any goal or intention other than indiscriminate destruction. These images raise a number of important questions about the nature of large- and small-scale violence. Who-all is responsible? If war requires the participation of many people, how does that happen? Have you ever been part of a team, family, or group of friends that made you think, feel, say, or do things you would not have done on your own? Do our technologies ever use us, instead of us using them? Should we make laws against making and using certain kinds of weapons? In Rondo, three friends ask War to go away, but then speak to War “in its own language,” by hurling stones and nails at it. Each is wounded in the failed attempt. Is violence against the violent justifiable—on the playground or between countries? Is pacifism honorable? Does it depend on who is waging violence against whom, for what reasons? How War Changed Rondo presents opportunities for intergenerational philosophical inquiry into questions about violence and war that, tragically, are all too timely.

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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 Going to Make a Friend (2025) by Darren Chetty

  Peter Shea

  Philosopher Darren Chetty’s first picture book playfully explores a sort of language-accident: we say we make drawings and machines–and also that we make friends. Chetty shows us a child who tries to construct a robot-friend. As the child thinks about the elements that go into a friendship, we’re reminded of the contradictory desires of childhood companionship: for space and comfort, adventure and familiarity, a private connection and an opening to the wider world. What would one put into an artificial companion? The problem is as old as Pinocchio and Pygmalion. As the construction proceeds, the other kind of “making friends” shows up: another child shows an interest in the project, but has different ideas. In the emerging world of artificial intelligence, this book’s investigation of the distinctive features of human interactions is urgently needed.

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  I’m in Charge of Celebrations (1986) by Byrd Baylor

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  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 in any natural setting, or in human spaces, and each of us should be in charge of our own celebrations. Some of us create works of art; some write stories or poems; some invent dances or songs. In any case, we should take this friend’s example of finding a way to give something back in appreciation.

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

  Peter Shea

  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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  I'm Trying to Love Spiders (2019) by Bethany Barton

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  Leese Webster (1979) by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Leese was a spider, born in a palace throne room. Like other members of the “Webster” family, Leese knew how to spin an elegant and efficient web of traditional design. But then she started to produce webs of original designs like the flowers portrayed in the carpet and the huntsmen and hounds in a painting. Were these images pictures? Many animal species dance, adorn themselves, and build elaborate nests to attract mates. Can they be more and less aesthetically gifted? Authorities had Leese’s webs encased in glass and put on exhibit. Did that change their metaphysical status?

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  Lorax (1971) by Dr. Seuss

  Megan Jane laverty

  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 environment, intergenerational dialogue, and critical discussion of the book’s two central moral lessons.

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  Mis Dos Pueblos Fronterizos / My Two Border Towns (2021) by David Bowles

  Amy Reed-Sandoval

  When children talk about migration and displacement, they generally speak and inquire about people. Why are some people forced to leave their homes—or why was I forced to leave my home? Why won’t other countries let them in—or why won’t other countries let my family and me in? What does it feel like to live in a shelter, or in a refugee camp, or on a bridge between two countries—or why must my family live this way, while others do not? This picture book shows how philosophical questions about migration can be inspired by, and embedded in, communities and characters that children can read, imagine, and care about. It emphasizes what young philosophers already know: that migrants are real people, living in real places, and embedded in real human relationships that are philosophically perplexing and deserving of collaborative analysis.

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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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  Now Everybody Really Hates Me (1993) by Jane Read Martin and Patricia Marx

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Patty Jane has been confined to her room for misbehaving at her brother’s birthday party. She resolves to stay there for the rest of her life, never cleaning it, even if poisonous mushrooms grow on her bed. She conceives an extravagant scheme for walking her dog without leaving her room, and a more extravagant plan to dig a tunnel so she can pull the plug when her brother takes a bath. Patty Jane is never conciliatory or matter-of-fact. Every threat, every promise is an outrageously imaginative idea. Being under the control of others—her parents—she belongs to the great army of the oppressed. But she is not defenseless. Her chief weapon of retaliation is bravado. Patty Jane is striking a pose, perhaps for her own encouragement and self-respect as much as for anything else. Posturing need not be self-deceptive. Sometimes, it is one’s best survival strategy.

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  One Day This Tree Will Fall (2024) by Leslie Barnard Booth

  Maughn Gregory

  Can a tree live a life worth living? This picture book makes the case that trees have lives that are at once intriguingly similar to human lives and just as intriguingly – and importantly – different. It nudges us to consider the meaning of our own lives and our place and our role in the natural world. But trees are quite mysterious. The more we learn about them, the more fantastical they seem – these ordinary inhabitants of every human city and village. This book invites young people and older people to think more about trees; but there is just as much to learn and to wonder about from spending careful, curious time with trees themselves.

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  Owl Moon (1987) by Jane Yolen

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  Possum that Didn't (1950/2016) by Arthur Frank Tashlin

  Maughn Rollins Gregory and Peter Shea

  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, but what do we really know about animal happiness? The other direction is existential: from the perspective of the possum, it dramatize the question: What do I do when I'm understood backwards over and over again—when the world I thought I lived in becomes unrecognizable?

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  Safiyyah’ s War (2023) by Hiba Noor Khan & The Grand Mosque of Paris (2009) by Karen Gray Ruelle & Deborah Durland DeSaix

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  Suppose that somebody takes over your city and begins harming your friends and neighbors. How do you respond? When is it your responsibility to act, and what kinds of risks should you take? How do these new moral demands change your relations to your neighbors, people in authority, and even your family? How do you stay sane and resolved when your safety is under constant threat? Telling the story of how the Muslim community in Paris risked their lives to save hundreds of Jews when Germany invaded France in World War II, this middle-grades novel and picture book also tell about how adults and children find their way around and through many ethical and political quandaries.

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  Sidewalk Flowers (2015) by JonArno Lawson

  Samantha Piede

  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.

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  Silan’s Box [Το κουτί του Σιλάν] (2017) by Άλκηστη Χαλικιά [Alkistis Chalikia]

  Maria Papathanasiou

  Silan is an eight-year-old boy who was forced to leave his country and live in a new homeland, in Greece. He lives in a refugee center where he goes to a new school but does not speak the same language as the other children. He carries a little box with him—so precious that he keeps it with him constantly and does not share its contents with anyone. The children ask him every day about the contents of the box and try to guess what his hidden treasure might be. They think of what they would shield in their own box if they were in Silan’s place. This story prompts questions about refugees, migration, home and homeland. For children who have heard about contemporary wars, it also prompts questions about whether and how war is ever justified.

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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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  Snail with the Right Heart (2021) by Maria Popova

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  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 we are, and about the ethics of accommodating and not accommodating genetic differences.

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  Something, Someday (2023) by Amanda Gorman

  Maughn Rollins 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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  Southwest Sunrise (2020) by Nikki Grimes

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  A genuine philosophical inquiry into the natural world has to begin with a genuine encounter with that world. In this arresting picture book by Nikki Grimes, a young boy named Jayden from New York City is forced into such an encounter when his parents relocate to the desert of New Mexico. This review focuses on suggestions the book offers for experiencing a natural landscape deeply, like slowing down, using all the senses, trying ‘beginner’s mind,’ making art, and using a field guide.

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  Story Boat (2020) by Kyo Maclear

  Samantha Piede

  When the protagonist in Kyo Maclear’s Story Boat (2020) opens the book with “Here we are,” it is unclear to readers where exactly “here” might be. When safety must take precedence over familiarity, one develops a fleeting relationship with place. It is tempting, in stories like these, to emphasize the pain of the refugee experience: the uncertainty, the loss of one’s ‘heres’. But Maclear takes a different tack, giving readers the tools to focus on hope and wonder. Teachers may prompt students, in light of the book, to reflect on what they think a ‘home’ or a ‘here’ feels like – stable, certain, warm, safe – and what sorts of things in their lives, outside of ‘place,’ carry those same qualities: a memento, perhaps, or an activity or a ritual. By highlighting these possibilities in their own lives and hearing from others, students may recognize new ways to anchor themselves: an instrumental coping skill for anyone enduring a significant change.