Picture Books and the Five Ways to Wellbeing • Lynne Garner

If you've read any of my previous posts you'll be aware that I also teach for a living. I'm lucky that my job is slightly different to most teaching roles. I teach almost any age from four year olds to someone in the 80s or even 90s. I teach almost where from a school dining room to a church hall to a craft room in a garden centre. Part of my job entails encouraging my students to look after their wellbeing. To achieve this we use the five ways to wellbeing. These five ways are:

• Connecting
• Being active
• Taking notice
• Keep learning 
• Giving 

Now I've talked about how picture books can be used as an educational tool in my posts Picture Books Aren't Just for Reading and Take a Picture Book and Add a Story Sack. However, in this post I've decided to explore how to use picture books to highlight the five ways of wellbeing. 

Firstly, I'll use one of my books. 

A Book For Bramble

Teasel the mouse has a best friend, Bramble the hedgehog. Bramble has gone into hibernation and Teasel is missing his friend very much. So he decides to create him a gift (giving) and writes him a book. In the book Teasel writes about all the fun things he does (being active), about the things that happen during winter (taking notice) and lastly when Bramble emerges from his long hibernation Teasel is waiting for him (re-connecting).    

The next book I'd like to suggest to use to explore the five ways to wellbeing is written by one of the Picture Book Den team, Chitra Soundar. 

Farmer Falgu Goes Kite Flying

It's the perfect day for flying a kite so Farmer Falgu and his daughter Ella load the cart with kites and they head to the fair grounds. On their way they meet Ahmed (the balloon man) and Pushpa (the fortune teller) who Farmer Falgu gives a lift to (connecting and giving). As they travel the kites and balloons are whisked away by a strong gust of wind. Some of the kites are blown high into the sky whilst others crash land. Farmer Falgu uses his skills (giving) to create a kite everyone is proud of.      

The next book I'd like to share is by another of the Picture Book Den team Pippa Goodhart. 

Daddy Frog and the Moon

Publication date 31st May 2019

Daddy Frog is so in love with his tadpole (Baby Frog) that he decides to get her a gift (giving), which will show her how much he loves her. So, ignoring her plea to teach her to swim (missing the opportunity to connect) in goes in search of the perfect gift. Daddy Frog misses teaching Baby Frog important froggy things such as wriggle and swimming. But finally shows her how to leap and  also discovers just by being there and doing things together he can show her how much he loves her (re-connecting). 

Looking at connecting from another perspective can be achieved by sharing a book written by yet another 'denner,' Jane Clarke.

Who Woke the Baby 

Although this book doesn't look at connecting in the way I've highlighted in the other books it is about connections and how we all connect to one another. How an act we do can affect not just the person/animal next to us but others who are nowhere near us. A lesson that is extremely important and links to one of the biggest issues of today, global warming and the degradation of the environment.     

Lastly I want to include these four books written by ex-denner, Moira Butterfield.

Everybody feels... Angry!

Everybody feels... Scared!

Everybody feel... Happy!

Everybody feels... Sad!

These books as a set would cover all of the five ways to wellbeing. For example just this single page from 'Everybody feels... Happy! could be used to talk about:

• Connecting: spending time with family
• Giving: being kind or helpful  
• Taking notice: being aware everyone has feelings and we can have an impact on another person, both positive and negative
• Keep learning: perhaps learning a new skill e.g. cooking
• Giving: Not only makes the person receiving the gift feel good but also it provides the giver a lift too 

So next time you read a picture book or discover a new one think about the five ways to wellbeing and 'notice' how what you can pull out and 'give the gift' of 'learning' to the child or children in your life.

Finally if you have any books you feel would lend themselves to teaching the five ways to wellbeing please share them below in the comments.

Lynne

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Why Reading Picture Books Matters - by Natascha Biebow

The brains of three to five year-olds do something really important when they read a picture book:

Their neurons do a kind of brain gym that develops their ability to experience things from other people’s perspectives – or empathise.

This is because, at this age, children are acquiring a theory-of-mind – an understanding that other people have thoughts, beliefs, and desires that may be different from their own.
 
Dr. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, says, “Around the same ages, children also begin to understand what characters in stories are feeling and thinking.”

Theory-of-mind tests include testing if a child is able to understand that someone may prefer broccoli over a cookie:

and how that is unique from their own desire for the cookie.

In 2010, Mar and his colleagues found that:

Mar and his colleagues also found that parents who were able to recognize children’s authors and book titles predicted their child’s performance on theory-of-mind tests. Parental recognition of adult book titles or authors had no effect on their child’s performance — the result was very specific to children’s books.

“There are aspects of joint-reading between parents and children that seem to be important to the process,” Mar said. 

This may be because when they read books together with their children, adults discuss how the characters are feeling, perhaps more so than at other times in daily life.

Researchers have also shown that children who watch a lot of TV, as opposed to reading storybooks, have a weaker understanding of other people's beliefs and desires, a lesser ability to be compassionate and reduced cognitive development.  

SO reading picture books and stories provides a means to muscle up children’s empathy network. Studies have also shown this is true for teens and adults, too.  

If we don’t use it, we could lose it . . .

In these troubled times, a world with empathy is the world I want for my children. 

Natascha Biebow

Author, Editor and Mentor

Blue Elephant Storyshaping is an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission.  Check out my small-group coaching Cook Up a Picture Book courses!

Natascha is also the author of Elephants Never Forget and Is This My Nose?, editor of numerous award-winning children’s books, and Regional Advisor (Chair) of SCBWI British Isles.  www.blueelephantstoryshaping.com

An Ode to Libraries - Wendy Meddour

This month we are delighted to have Wendy Meddour as our guest blogger. Wendy spent many years teaching English Literature at Oxford University but took a little break so she could concentrate on writing children's books. Only (thankfully for us readers) that little break turned into a big break and, though she's back teaching at university, she still loves writing for children and really can't stop.


I wrote 'How the Library (Not the Prince) Saved Rapunzel' before they started shutting them all down! I hadn’t planned to write a book ‘with a message’. I was just writing a love letter to the places I loved:

The library was always a magical place for me. And on occasion, it was also my child-minder. I hated going into the city centre when I was little. All those stuffy shops, shopping bags and legs. So when Mum needed to go and wrestle with the crowds, I would ask her to leave me in the children’s section, cross-legged on the floor reading books. (What can I say? Things were different then). It was one of the highlights of my week. Shelves upon shelves of colour and thought – just waiting for me to jump in and get lost.

The library was my ‘Faraway Tree’: I’d climb its branches and know that it would always take me somewhere new. It was my passport and the place of my dreams. And I was allowed to take some of those journeys home. For free! Those childhood years, in which I sat cross-legged on the floor reading books (instead of being bruised by shopping bags) led me to where I am now ...  

I took my paper pockets of thought home and read them in the top of the airing cupboard. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a sociable soul and my outside-of-the-airing-cupboard childhood was a very happy place. But whilst I was curled up on the top shelf behind the towels, reading book upon book upon book, I learnt empathy, humour, compassion & escape! For a child in a fairly cramped space, my world became extraordinarily large. This undoubtedly helped me on my way. I did pretty well at school. I travelled. I married someone from completely somewhere else. I got a doctorate and taught English at Oxford University. I made a living out of reading and writing books! Libraries led to lots of good stuff. In fact, I hold libraries and their contents largely responsible for the shape and colour of my life! And my life to date has been rather colourful. So thank-you libraries - you were my Mrs Doubtfire. My Faraway Tree. My very own Nanny McFee. 

To conclude a post about libraries, it seems appropriate to end with 'Story Time'. So here's a little snippet from the end of my picture book. Beautifully illustrated by the very brilliant Rebecca Ashdown, it says all I want to say:

Now Rapunzel has changed and it makes her wince,

to think that she used to just wait for a prince!

That she used to just sit.

That she didn’t move –

with nowhere to go and nothing to prove!

For now she reads three books every night

Under the beam of her bedside light:

She can tell you the distance to the moon,

    she can do Scottish dancing & play the bassoon.

She can speak in four languages, skip and play chess,

she can knit tiny egg cups and cross stitch a dress,

She knows the difference between crows and rooks –

And all because of ...

  ... LIBRARY BOOKS!

So don’t just wait for a prince to show,

He might turn up, but you never know.

Just pop to your library and borrow a book –

There’s so much to find out if only you look:

But don’t just sit and wait and stare . . .

When there’s more to life than growing your hair!

To keep up to date with The Bookseller’s campaign on Twitter, follow: @fight4libraries

To keep up with me (now I'm out of the airing cupboard), click here

To read a great article about libraries by Neil Gaiman, click here 

And to see a jolly photo of Einstein, don't go anywhere!