Picture Books

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  The Ugly Place (2022) by Laura Deal

  Samantha Piede

  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 vast and beautiful than our anxieties.

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  Three Stories You Can Read to Your Cat (1997) by Sara Swan Miller

  Gareth B. Matthews

  When a cat's human friend leaves the house and tells it to be good, the cat does many things it considers good, like shredding the curtains, eating a house plant, and digging into the garbage. In this review, originally published in Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 16(4), 2003, Gareth B. Matthews demonstrates that young children can understand and enjoy the irony of sarcasm. They also enjoy grappling with the story's philosophical irony: the problem of clarifying the difficult question of what makes an action good or bad.

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  Two Islands (1985) by Ivan Gantschev

  Gareth B. Matthews

  This is the story of two islands in the middle of the ocean: Greenel, whose citizens kept it fertile and green, and Graynel, whose citizens covered it with factories and skyscrapers. Citizens of Graynel wanted to vacation on Greenel and proposed to build a bridge between the islands, but the citizens of Greenel refused. Intending to force the bridge, citizens of Graynel stockpiled steel and cement and weapons on one end of the island, eventually causing it to tip on its edge and slide into the sea. While the moral of this modern fable is obvious – overarching human ambition, without regard to nature’s limitations, brings self-destruction – it can also open philosophical conversations about alternatives between pastoral Greenel and overdeveloped Graynel. Unlike children’s literature that is meant to socialize children to take their preordained places in society, this book is aimed at encouraging children to be social critics.

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  Walk in the Woods (2023) by Nikki Grimes

  Maughn Rollins 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 Water Protectors (2020) by Carole Lindstrom

  Peter Shea

  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.

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  What is a River? (2021) by Monika Vaicenavičiene

  Maughn Rollins Gregory

  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 asking, “Is there anything else going on here?” or, in the grandmother's language, "What else is a river?”

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  Wild Boy (1998) by Mordicai Gerstein

  Gareth B. Matthews

  Once there was a boy who lived alone, without a mother or father or any friends, in a forest in Southern France. He was naked. He didn’t even know what clothes were. He didn’t know he was a boy. He didn’t know what people were. He was wild. When a group of hunters discovered the boy, they delivered him to scientists in Paris, who eventually gave up trying to communicate with him. The boy was taken in by Dr. Itard and his housekeeper, Madame Guerin, who taught him to dress himself, to read and write simple words, and help around the house—though he never learned to speak. Mordicai Gerstein’s sensitively written and beautifully illustrated picture book about of the wild child of Aveyron, who was captured in Southern France two hundred years ago, invites us to ask ourselves who we are, what makes us human beings, and how we differ from nonhuman animals.

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  You Are an Explorer (2020) by Shahrzad Shahrjerdi

  Farzaneh Shahrtash

  This beautifully illustrated book, with exaggerated pictures of two unprotected children, deals with the issue of post-war displacement of children and their families. While the parents of these two explorers are absent for an unknown reason, the older brother is taking care of the younger sister by his creative thinking. He is trying to use the power of his imagination based on care, as a technique to face seemingly unendurable and oppressive situations. The children who discuss You Are an Explorer may not have experienced a real war, may not have been in any post-war situations, and may not have experienced displacement. Perhaps they haven’t even been in contact with those who have been through any of these circumstances, but they can still explore some relevant concepts in this book, opening dialogue with their peers.