By Sara Manzi
Being a fanatic bookworm and mother of a six-year-old child, I love to collect and read children’s books. Reading aloud to and with my daughter Luna at bedtime is one of the best moments of the day. Books are powerful tools to expand children’s imagination, develop a critical mind, and learn about fantastic creatures, unexplored worlds, and different visions of life. According to research, reading aloud has many cognitive benefits, such as improving attention, active listening, and problem-solving skills. In addition, stories and poems help boost children’s language development by expanding their vocabulary and strengthening their literacy skills. Especially for a multilingual family (like ours), reading is crucial to maintaining home languages at the same level and creating strong family and cultural bonds. As the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf highlights, how and what we think is largely the result of intuitions and associations connected with our readings. Reading changes the brain at both physiological levels, creating new neuronal connections, and intellectually, exposing the reader to a myriad of experiences, realities, and ways of acting in the world. Besides cognitive and neurological advantages, the quality time spent reading together builds a deeper connection with your child, nourishes enjoyment and relaxation, and cultivates a lifelong love of books.
In Western countries, it is not very common to find a sangha or a dharma teacher who provides support or resources to families willing to share the Dharma content and practice with their children, and that is the reason why I consider children’s books an educative and interactive means to get acquainted with some basic Buddhist norms and values.
Generally, I am very interested in picture books that address diverse spiritual, faith, and philosophical themes because they enrich children’s knowledge and promote mutual understanding, critical thinking, and respect for others’ beliefs or attitudes toward life. Becoming aware and open to different worldview options and choosing what works best is far more important in our family than following a single path, as Buddhism suggests.
Books can serve as a Dharma compass in introducing some fundamental Buddhist teachings, but although children’s literature nowadays offers many meaningful books, making the right choice could be tricky and overwhelming. In addition, as Nikko Odiseos, former president of Shambhala Publications, stresses in an article (https://www.shambhala.com/buddhist-publishing/), ‘while there are a lot of great books with Buddhist-ish lessons or morals, the options for Buddhist parents who want to really help their kids understand and learn dharma in-depth are quite weak.’
I personally also think that there are a lot of subjects that have not been explored enough or at all within the Buddhist community. Controversial or contemporary topics such as cyberbullying, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, violence and war, environmental issues, and human rights deserve to be questioned through a Buddhist lens and become accessible to young readers.
Stories generate a safe space where children can explore emotions and learn how to deal with them. Recognising emotions and needs and learning how to express them respectfully and inclusively is one of the recurrent subjects in our reading. In the last decade, the educational method of social-emotional learning (SEL) has produced a ton of books that aim to foster social and emotional skills. The Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics (CCSCBE) at Emory University has further expanded the SEL in Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEE), an innovative K–12 education programme that focuses on the emotional, social, and ethical sides of well-being.
Besides that, children’s books about mindfulness teem on the bookshop’s shelves. Breathing lessons illustrated or told by story characters are a good addition or substitute for formal meditation practice.
In the last decade, children’s literature about Buddhism has been growing fast. Next to the most notorious Buddhist publishers such as Wisdom, Bala Kids, Parallax Press, Windhorse, Maitreya, Dharma, and Tharpa, there are lots of publishers, foundations, or independent writers who do not strictly belong to a Buddhist tradition, and their books aren’t always translated into English. I believe this rich, multilingual, and multicultural publishing panorama deserves to be promoted. Soon on the Dharma Parenting blog (https://dharmaparenting.wordpress.com/), we will start publishing a monthly children’s book review based on personal experience and hopefully integrated with some author or publishing interviews. Although many books are not yet available in English, they might be a good source of inspiration.
In this article, I will present a couple of books Luna and I have been reading recently and our personal experiences.
Happiness Doesn’t Come from Headstands, by Tamara Levitt, a Canadian author and illustrator and the narrator of the Calm app.
Luna likes to do yoga. When she is in the mood, she unrolls the yoga mat and tries to imitate the animals’ poses illustrated in My First Yoga ABC (by the author Teresa Anne Power and illustrator Kathleen Rietz), a Christmas gift from her aunt. But there is a pose she still finds difficult to hold: the swan (generally called cobra pose, where the soles of the feet touch the back of the head). When I encountered Tamara’s book, I was sure Luna would relate to the experience of failure and resilience of the main character. Leela can do all sorts of poses, but there is one pose she cannot do: headstands. In the story, she learns to accept her limitations and become aware of her strengths. The main message of the book, as the back cover cites, is that ‘sometimes trying- and failing- can be a path to happiness, too’. Why did I add this book to the shelf of Buddhist children’s literature? First, I like how the concept of happiness has been depicted as an impermanent and multifaceted element in our lives that is not necessarily linked to external goals. Secondly, how compassion and sympathetic joy arise through the characters’ dialogue. After we read the book, Luna made a couple of drawings. The first one is about what she thinks the message of the story is, and she chose to portray herself helping me do the headstands (I am not very good at that anymore, in fact!). In other words, happiness means helping a friend (or her mother in this case) learn something, as the best friend of Leela did exactly in the story. In the second one, she drew what she is good at or enjoys doing at home or school. A good exercise to stimulate her self-reflection and self-compassion. We concluded together that the swan pose and everything else she is not able to do yet are just tiny, difficult steps compared to what she has been learning so far and certainly do not define who she is because we (adults included) keep learning, failing, growing, and changing over time.
Take a breath… (Dutch version: Adem in….) by Sujean Rim. Born and raised in Brooklyn to South Korean parents, is an award-winning illustrator and children’s book writer.
Bob is a baby bird who tries to learn to fly. Fear, anxiety, and concern take over and discourage him. When his friend Crow tells him, “All you need to do is breathe, Bob”, he first does not understand that breathing instead means B-R-E-A-T-H-I-N-G. Thanks to a mindfulness lesson, he learns to believe in himself and persist despite adversity.
Luna found Bob very cute and vulnerable, but at the same time courageous. For her, the red colour of his feathers symbolises strength ‘and not anger as in The Colour Monster’ (the book of Anna Llenas), she pointed out. The message in the book is straightforward and practical: mindfulness is a magic process to get focused and confident enough to dare learn something new. The story has been a good opportunity to practice mindfulness together and create a small paper bird for the fridge as a reminder of how helpful breathing can be when we try to fly in new and challenging life adventures.
In conclusion, children’s literature is a supportive instrument for sharing, reflecting, and learning about life matters and inner realms. A powerful companion in our daily Dharma practice both as individuals and as parents who try their best to raise their children to become compassionate, resilient, and grounded human beings. Reading aloud to my child and getting to know so many illuminating and suggestive stories has been taking me on a meaningful path of self-discovery as well as reconnection with the spontaneous, playful, and imaginative side childhood embodies. As The Tao of Pooh (by Benjamin Hoff) reminds us, “When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.”
References and tips
- Anna Llenas: http://www.annallenas.com/ilustracion-editorial/el-monstruo-de-colores-pop-up.html
- Benjamin Hoff: https://www.benjaminhoffauthor.com/
- Sujean Rim: https://www.sujeanrim.com/
- Tamara Levitt: https://tamaralevitt.com/the-secret-to-claras-calm-2/
- Teresa Power: https://www.abcyogaforkids.com/
- The PEACH project (Preserving and promoting Europe’s cultural and linguistic heritage through empowerment of bilingual children and families) provides free tips and resources for multilingual families: https://bilingualfamily.eu/
- An educative video about “Reading aloud with multilingual children” made by the YouTube channel Activities for Multilingual Families: https://youtu.be/1xaoMsXV1m8
- Maryanne Wolf Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, 2007
- Aidan Chambers Tell me: Children, Reading & Talk, 1993
- Jennifer Serravallo The Reading Strategies Book: your everything guide to developing skilled readers, 2015.
About the author
Sara Manzi is a language teacher, peace educator, and Vipassana practitioner. She studied Social Sciences for Peace and African Studies and holds a language teaching diploma. She is currently enrolled in the master’s programme in Religious Sciences and Intercultural Mediation at the University of Turin. She does not strictly belong to a Buddhist sangha, but she feels mostly connected to the Forest Theravada tradition and the Santacittarama monastery in Italy. She is originally Italian and lives in The Netherlands with her husband and daughter. She loves writing, reading children’s books, learning languages and instruments, and spending time in nature with her family.
This article first appeared in EBU Magazine #11 – Buddhism and Education (Autumn 2023). Download the full issue as PDF or browse all issues.