Many children have deep spiritual experiences that adults may not know how to validate (or even, sometimes, acknowledge in themselves). Books can give children a sense that their liminal, fragile, and ignored-by-most-grownups experiences are worthy and precious. I asked Whitney Stewart, author of the picture book biography Becoming Buddha: The Story of Siddhartha, to comment on this topic:

“I have a great deal to say on the subject of adults ignoring the ‘spiritual’ experiences of children. When I was fourteen, I took a rafting trip with my best friend and her older siblings. We hit a rough patch of white water and the raft flipped. I was on the bow and I got trapped under the raft and in some tangled branches. I started running out of air and panicked for a period. Then suddenly my internal voice said, ‘Oh this is just death,’ and I relaxed completely. I ‘saw’ scenes from my whole life as if in one frame of a movie, and I felt bright light and deep peace. I stopped struggling. And I felt joy.“Then someone pulled me out of the water. I was choking, and I tried to talk about what had happened but no one was interested in listening. We had to portage the raft over rough riverbank.“This was one of several childhood experiences of something beyond myself that I have tried to understand. These ‘sensed’ experiences led me to Tibet in 1986 and into Tibetan Buddhism. I chose to meet and write about the Dalai Lama because I wanted to understand his view of universal consciousness.“I now have a strong urge to teach children how to listen to their inner wisdom and connect to universal wisdom as they understand it. To me this connection can happen at any time in any place if the child is ‘listening’ in a full body-mind-heart way. My newest book on meditation shows kids simple ways to make this connection.“I could talk forever on this subject. But this is a start.”

Thank you, Whitney, for your thoughtful perspective. For a preview of Whitney’s book on meditation, including instructions and illustrations to get you (kids and grownups) started, click here. PaperTigers welcomes readers’ book recommendations and comments on the topic of spiritual books for children–and other topics as well, as always. See Whitney’s blog here.

“Katrina did something to my psyche,” says New Orleans children’s writer Whitney Stewart. Along with her teenage son and her 87-year-old mother-in-law, and with a cast on her own injured ankle, she was rescued by helicopter late at night after five days stranded on the fifth floor of the Tulane Medical School building during the hurricane’s aftermath. It was “a crazy, chaotic, unsettling experience… We’d tried earlier to leave but our rescue boat had been overtaken by people with guns… After Katrina, I needed to do new things. I needed a new paradigm for New Orleans.”

Whitney is now learning to kayak and doing volunteer work with the public schools. On a whim, the former high school actor sent photos of herself, her guitarist son, and her geneticist husband to casting agents; her son landed a role in “Cirque de Freak,” to be filmed in New Orleans this year.

But this writer had an adventurous life long before Katrina. After trekking the Himalaya twenty years ago with her mom, Whitney, who’d discovered her affinity for the biographical form as a Brown undergrad, wrote biographies for children of the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, Sir Edmund Hillary, and the Buddha. Her love of travel has also led her to write two young adult novels that present kids’ eye views of New Orleans (Jammin’ on the Avenue) and San Francisco (Blues Across the Bay).

A primary concern is getting across the message of subjects like the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. Her biography, Aung San Suu Kyi: Fearless Voice of Burma, is soon to be re-issued, with proceeds going to a non-profit that benefits the Burmese cause. “I’m amazed that so few people have heard of her,” Whitney told me. She’ll tell us about meeting this brave Burmese woman in an upcoming guest blog. Stay tuned!

One of Australian illustrator Sally Rippin‘s recent children’s books (published in 2005 in Australia, 2007 in the U.S.) opens upwards rather than outwards. I asked Sally how she and author Whitney Stewart decided on the format for Becoming Buddha. Here’s her reply:

“Whitney suggested working together on a picture book, and I approached my publisher at the time with her ideas. They agreed to publish our book, and it was then left up to me to illustrate Whitney’s text. I decided to have Becoming Buddha open so the illustration reads vertically on the double page to represent an ancient manuscript, or a thangka. From what I know about Buddhism, I believe opening the book in this way makes you more conscious of your actions. Fortunately, the publisher agreed to this format.

“Painting the face of Siddhartha was quite challenging, because I knew there were certain rules about how the Buddha could be represented in art, and I also wanted to make the paintings my own representations of Siddhartha, the man, before he became enlightened. Again fortunately, Whitney was able to have a representative of the Dalai Lama approve the artwork before it went to press, so that gave me confidence.”

Melbourne poet and blogger Kris Helmsley had some interesting observations about the layout and Buddhism when he introduced Sally and Becoming Buddha at a book launch in June 2007; read his comments here.

Another vertically read book with an equally conscious layout is Caldecott Medal winner Ed Young’s Beyond the Great Mountains. Its cascading-style pages, illustrating Chinese characters and landscapes, also create a special physical awareness for young readers.