The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award recognizes exemplary children’s  literature that addresses issues of peace, justice and world community. In this article, I highlight the "Learning Actions" lens I have developed through my work with children and adults, and pair this framework with several Jane Addams Award winners and honorees in the category of "Books for Younger Children." These books, along with the ones in the "Books for Older Children" category, offer important narratives about the human experience, and encourage reflection and movement toward creating a better world for us all. In addition to offering opportunities to teach children more directly about social justice, social studies and civic literacy concepts, these titles lend themselves to more embedded learning, such as the practice of interpretive/inferential skills (i.e. the ability to combine clues that the text provides with information the reader already has, in order to interpret and process information).

Here I combine a sample of these books with guiding questions and four broad "Learning Actions," a term I use to indicate learning that combines reflection and action. I believe the actions and books mentioned in this article may be useful tools for parents and teachers to engage young ones in thinking about issues of peace, fairness and the common good.

Learning Action #1:  Notice Common Human Needs and Foster Empathy

Empathy, the capacity to imagine someone else’s situation, is developed through trying to understand the feelings, needs and experiences of others.  As expressed in Jane Addams' (1860-1935) lifetime of work, empathy requires direct experience, reflection, and imagination.

Guiding questions:

What brings us joy, sorrow, and concern as humans? What are core human rights and needs? How might we imagine meeting everybody’s needs?

Book suggestions:

Sélavi, That is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope, written and illustrated by Youme (Cinco Puntos Press, 2004), describes the journey of children in Haiti who are homeless, hungry, and in search of their basic needs being met. Sélavi also tells the story, through expressive paintings and text informed by real stories, of the hopeful actions of children and adults who built a home and a radio station promoting children’s human rights.

Vera William’s Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart (Greenwillow, 2001) explores shared human experiences like comfort, joy, safety and fear. Poem and pencil-drawing vignettes depict two sisters coping as mother works long hours and they deal with their confusion over father’s incarceration. Together they fill their waking hours with a range of emotions and creative support, and their loving human spirit endures.

Learning Action #2: Practice Perspective-Taking Skills

By practicing perspective-taking skills we become “well-oiled” at considering issues, including conflicts, from different points of view.

Guiding questions:

Can we look at a given problem from different angles? How can we consider another point of view?  What new questions do I have after stepping into a character’s shoes? How might we imagine what someone else is feeling and thinking?

Book suggestions:

In Hey, Little Ant, written by Phillip and Hannah Hoose and illustrated by Debbie Tilley (Tricycle, 1998), a human is about to squish an ant when the ant talks back. The perspective-widening illustrations and lively dialogue between boy and ant end with a question from both.

Henry and the Kite Dragon, written by Bruce Edward Hall and illustrated by William Low (Philomel Books/Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004), shows how conflict can be magnified when unchecked assumptions are made about people and groups we don’t know. Based in the 1920’s New York immigrant communities of Little Italy and Chinatown, the message holds relevancy today.

Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam, written by Walter Dean Myers with collages by Ann Grifalconi (Harper Children's, 2002), provides a human face to war and fighting by trailing along with a soldier who is watching for and wondering about “the enemy”.  Although a picture book, since it examines questions around the complex issue of war, adult guidance is strongly recommended.

Learning Action #3: Learn From Historical Events and People

Historical picture books on peace, justice, war, and human rights issues widen our view of history and encourage reflection.

Guiding questions:

How does a book help us think about human conflicts? Do we recognize that history indeed has the capacity to “repeat itself”? How am I connected to this story and to the historical events and people who have made contributions to history?

Book suggestions:

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, by Amy Lee-Tai and illustrated by Felicia Hoshino (Children’s Book Press, 2006), is the story of Mari’s family surviving and keeping an art school while sentenced to years of internment at theTopaz Japanese-American internment camp. For younger readers this Japanese-English bilingual book offers expressions of hope, friendship and survival through a young child’s eyes, and for older readers it sheds light on a tragic and little-known period of the United States' history.

One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II written and illustrated by Lita Judge (Hyperion Books for Children, 2007), conveys the power of compassionate choices families in America made in the aftermath of WWII, and gently presents the devastation and loss that people in Germany faced after the war. The collage art includes original photographs and reproductions of foot tracings from the author’s grandmother’s attic! 

In The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom by Emily Arnold McCully (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007), Oney Judge breaks away from slavery and claims her right to be free during the late 1770s. The text and watercolor paintings invite readers to imagine Ms. Judge’s perspective on the daily injustices that people in slavery experienced at the same time as many Americans were gaining freedom. This picture book biography invites questions about freedom, oppression and the paradox around the formation of the United States.

Delivering Justice: W.W. Law and the Fight for Civil Rights, written by Jim Haskins and illustrated by Benny Andrews (Candlewick Press, 2005), introduces Westley Wallace Law, mail carrier and civil rights community organizer who led the people of Savannah, Georgia to become the first southern city to declare all citizens equal, three years before the federal civil rights act.

Action #4: Share Our Own Stories of Human Possibility

Each person can contribute to a more peaceful, just world. Remembering people who have done great things in history does not require putting them on a pedestal as “super-human”; all humans have potential to create positive change.

Guiding questions:

How is this book connected to the author’s own life? How are you connected to this story? What part of your life story would you like to tell? 

Book suggestions:

Author and illustrator George Littlechild offers poems, illustrations and family history photographs in This Land Is My Land (Children’s Book Press, 1993). As a member of the Plains Cree Nation, Littlechild invites readers to step into his cultural view of  the arrival of Columbus, residential school, history and celebration; an accessible expression of beauty, pain, strength and vision.

Seven Brave Women written by Betsy Hearne and  illustrated by Bethanne Anderson (Greenwillow, 1997) challenges the notion of marking time in history books through various wars since “there are other ways to mark time." The book stemmed from the author's family history research, as a way to honor the varied ways in which women from her family have contributed to history.

With Poems to Dream Together/Poemas Para Soñar Juntos, author Francisco X. Alarcón and illustrator Paula Barragán (Lee and Low Books, 2005) encourage us to follow our dreams and to celebrate the interwoven connections of life. The poems were inspired by the children Alarcón has worked with and by his own family story.

By telling our own stories and learning about the stories of others, we become a part of the stream of narratives and hopeful actions that shape our common history. We become a part of Jane Addams’ legacy of peace and justice and working for the common good.