Top 5 Things I Learned From Children's Literature

I've been thinking a lot lately about how everything good I've learned in my life I read in a children's book. I must admit, this is one of the major pulls of being an elementary school teacher. Last year, reading The Giving Tree out loud to a group of wide-eyed six-year-olds, I found myself drowning in a puddle of my own tears by the last page. They all got really quiet after that and made me cards during writing center time because they thought they had done something really, really bad.

Unfortunately, not everyone reads picture books out loud for a living. So here are the top five lessons I've learned in the last five years. Really. Top five. And I learned them all while sitting in knee-achingly tiny chairs.

1. "Everybody needs a rock." (From Everybody Needs A Rock by Byrd Baylor): This is maybe the most useful thing I've ever learned in my entire life. You know that day that started with you tucking your dress into your tights and then meeting with your boss; and ended with getting rear-ended by someone in a beat-up Honda who drove away? You need a rock on that day. Like... a literal rock. I find I need a rock on most days. This book says you really only need one, but I have a purse rock, a pocket rock, a bedside rock, and a desk rock. It's amazing what sadnesses a rock can't heal. And sometimes, when you just really want to play outside, and everyone says, "You're much too old to be playing outside," your rock will say, "You be the princess, I'll be the frog."

2. “... And she loved a boy very, very much-- even more than she loved herself.” (From The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein): Here are the two things that you can learn from The Giving Tree: 1. If you love someone more than you love yourself, you will end your life without most of your body parts, dejected and alone, nothing more than a stump. And 2. If you love someone more than you love yourself, you will end your life happy. So the true moral is to heed both reminders. You have to take care of your limbs sometimes; you have to know that ultimately, at the end of the day, you are going to have to sit with yourself a lot. So you'd better love yourself some, or the world is not going to grant you any favors. But you know, when you give yourself to someone else, it comes back to you. At the end of the day, you will never be alone. I would not like to be the giving tree. She is just way too giving. The boy really has it figured out. He gives himself to the giving tree, and he takes care of himself. In the end, I kind of think he's the hero of the story. We are never alone. It is our nature to love each other.

3. "Only eight years old and in the third grade, and I can fly. That means I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life." (From Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold): What a good book. The premise of this book is that this girl loves to lie on her roof and imagine that she can fly all over the world and own whatever she sees. And that's it. That's the whole story. There's roasted peanuts and watermelon somewhere in the story, too, but mostly it's about being free within your own mind and spirit, no matter how destructive and mean the rest of the world may be. Every day, you might wake up, hit the grindstone, and try to make the world a better place. And every day, the world might say, "I HATE YOU! I HAVE NO INTEREST IN BEING A NICE PLACE TO LIVE IN!" And to the world you must respond, "But in my mind, I can fly over you, and in my reality, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and there's nothing you can do about it!" Make your own truth some days. And make your truth one in which you can fly. 

4. "Liam may not have been a gardener, but he know that he could help."(From The Curious Garden by Peter Brown): All you really need in life is to know what you love. Liam loves to be outside. Then he finds the most badass little dying garden ever when he wanders up to an abandoned railroad track. (Already in this story, Liam is my definition of the perfect man.) He loves the garden, and although he makes mistakes, the garden is patient while he learns to tend it. If you love something enough, you will find a way to make a difference in the world. Liam makes the whole grungy gray town he lives in into a beautiful Garden of Eden Part 2, with the help of all of those he inspires (including this dumb blonde girl, whom Liam ends up marrying and having babies with at the end. Alternate lesson of this book: hot gardeners prefer tan blondes). There is way too much hubris in the world. That's not useful, really. What we need is to love the things we love and to take care of them with all our hearts. The Curious Garden is the book I read alone when the weight of the world is too heavy for my bones. I come away from it feeling healed.

5. "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus." (From Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus by Mo Willems): It's not because pigeons aren't delightful animals. It's not because pigeons aren't persuasive. It is because pigeons are too small to reach the pedals, and they do not have driver's licences, and if you let them drive they will endanger dozens of eco-conscious commuters. Let the pigeon poop on a sculpture instead. That's a far more appropriate activity for a pigeon.