Teaching Children to Care with Books

Coretta Scott King Honor Winner * Jane Addams Peace Award

With its powerful anti-bullying message and striking art, it will resonate with readers long after they’ve put it down.

Chloe and her friends won’t play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her.

Eventually Maya stops coming to school.

When Chloe’s teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she’d shown a little kindness toward Maya.

With his stunning watercolors -- and text that resounds with universal truths, award-winning artist Jon J Muth has transformed a story by Tolstoy into a timeless fable for young readers.

Young Nikolai is searching for the answers to his three questions: When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do?

But it is his own response to a stranger's cry for help that leads him directly to the answers he is looking for.

This profound and inspiring book is about compassion and being engaged in each moment. With his stunning watercolors -- and text that resounds with universal truths, Jon J Muth has transformed a story by Leo Tolstoy into a timeless fable for readers of every age!

Winner of 24 awards!

This 32-page picture book is perfect for children, parents, grandparents, teachers and people that want to teach empathy, nurture kindness and create a positive environment in their home, classroom, workplace and community.

While using a simple metaphor of a bucket and a dipper, author Carol McCloud illustrates that when we choose to be kind, we not only fill the buckets of those around us, but also fill our OWN bucket!

Conversely, when we choose to say or do mean things, we are dipping into buckets.

All day long, we are either filling up or dipping into each other's buckets by what we say and what we do. 

When you're a bucket filler, you make the world a better place to be! 

On a cold winter day, a curious dog wandered onto a frozen river, and before he knew it he was traveling fast on a sheet of ice.

Many people tried to help, but the dog could not be reached. Finally, after two nights and seventy-five miles, the little dog was saved by a ship out in the Baltic Sea. 

The gallant rescue of the little dog nicknamed Baltic made international news.

Mônica Carnesi’s simple text and charming watercolor illustrations convey all the drama of Baltic’s journey. 

Caldecott Medal Award Winner

This brilliantly illustrated, amusingly observed tale of Mallards on the move has won the hearts of generations of readers. 

Mrs. Mallard was sure that the pond in the Boston Public Gardens would be a perfect place for her and her eight ducklings to live.

The problem was how to get them there through the busy streets of Boston.

With a little help from the Boston police, Mrs. Mallard and her ducking arrive safely at their new home.

The Caldecott Award-winning and New York Times bestselling fable of compassion and kindness retold by acclaimed artist Jerry Pinkney.

After a ferocious lion spares a cowering mouse that he’d planned to eat, the mouse later comes to his rescue, freeing him from a poacher’s trap. 

In this simple book, the author begins by helping children see that when they are sick, hurt, or unhappy, others care about them.

Children can then begin to see that others need to be cared about as well.

One boy's quest for a greener world... one garden at a time.

While out exploring one day, a little boy named Liam discovers a struggling garden and decides to take care of it.

As time passes, the garden spreads throughout the dark, gray city, transforming it into a lush, green world.

This is an enchanting tale with environmental themes and breathtaking illustrations that become more vibrant as the garden blooms.

Red-headed Liam can also be spotted on every page, adding a clever seek-and-find element to this captivating picture book.

When Ant spies a carefree Grasshopper playing a fiddle outside on the lawn, Ant immediately harrumphs at the insect’s foolishness and continues to go about his very serious business of gathering and counting his food for the winter.

When the harsh winter hits and Ant finds Grasshopper cold and hungry in the snow, he can’t help but bring him inside.

Only after opening his home to Grasshopper does Ant realize that music, dancing, and laughter have their place in his life, too. 

After being initiated into a neighbor’s family by a solemn backyard ceremony, a young Russian American girl and her African American brothers’ determine to buy their gramma Eula a beautiful Easter hat.

Their good intentions are misunderstood, until they discover just the right way to pay for the hat that Eula’s had her eye on. 

In this enchantingly told original folktale, a wise quilt maker makes the most beautiful quilts in the world – but she will give them only to those who have nothing.

When a rich, dissatisfied king insists that she give him one of her quilts, she gives him what seems an impossible task: to give away all he owns.

One by one, the king gives away his many possessions, and finds that the more he gives away, the happier he is.

Finally, when the king has nothing, the quilt maker gives him the promised quilt.

He knows that the true reward for his generosity has been the smiles of those he has helped.

Solomon Singer is a middle-aged man who lives in a hotel for men in New York City.

One night his solitary wanderings take him into a restaurant where he reads these words on the menu: ''The Westway Cafe -- where all your dreams come true. ''

A soft-voiced waiter (metaphorically named Angel) welcomes him and invites him back.

Each night Singer returns, ordering food and, silently, ordering his wishes for the things he remembers from an Indiana boyhood.