17 Reasons for Children’s Books

Eureka! I struck 3-in-1 online gold this week: an international award for children’s books, child-friendly reasons for reading, and gorgeously illustrated free posters for each of the reasons (each illustration by a different Swedish children’s books illustrator).

Fifteen years ago, when I inherited the world literature course at an international school, I was appalled at my own dearth of awareness of global literature. American and British, yes. British Empire, yes. (Rudyard Kipling is India, right?) Even a smattering of western civ: Dante, Goethe, Tolstoy. But Asia? Latin America? Africa? The Middle East? Even anything European since 1950? Nope. Nothing. Nada. 

So I started working on it. I picked one country per year, represented by a student in my class, to get to know at least one author from. I asked parents, “What is one author or work of literature from your home country that you wish your child would encounter in their international school education?” I read at least one work from each year’s Nobel Prize for Literature winner as they won, and tried to familiarize myself with past winners as well. It was great for my understanding of the world; however, many of those wouldn’t be accessible or appropriate for my high school readers. Then 18 months ago I moved down into middle school, and then 6 months ago elementary, and I was at a loss all over again.

Hooray for the Swedish government and its Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award! It is the largest award of its kind (over $500,000!) and has been given annually since 2003 to an international children’s author (11) or illustrator (7), or organization that promotes reading (3) (Fast Facts). The authors have been from France, South Korea, Belgium, US, UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Brazil, and Austria (The Laureates). Guess what’s going on my Christmas list!

I was even more delighted with the child-friendly list of reading reasons, as some of my current lists target high school (“Reading prepares you for college and the world of work”) and adults (“Reading protects against dementia.”): 

1. Books can make us laugh and cry. They can comfort us and show us new possibilities.
2. Books help us develop our language and our vocabulary.
3. Books fire our imagination and train us in finding inner images.
4. Books can ask fresh questions that arouse our interest and cause us to reflect further.
5. Books give us concepts to think with. They broaden our consciousness and our world.
6. Books give us knowledge about nature, technology and history, and about other countries and other ways of life.
7. Books enable us to become someone else. They develop our ability to empathize and to feel compassion.
8. Books make us reflect on what's right or wrong, good or bad.
9. Books can explain reality and help us understand how things are connected.
10. Books can show us that most things can be seen from different points of view.
11. Books boost our self-confidence when we realize that others think and feel as we do.
12. Books help us understand that we are both similar and dissimilar.
13. Books offer company when we're lonely.
14. Books are part of our cultural heritage. They give us shared reading experiences and common frames of reference.
15. Books that are read aloud bring children and adults together.
16. Children's books give us access to different artistic forms such as illustration, photography, poetry and drama.
17. Children's book represent our first contact with literature - an unending world that lasts all our lives.

Gorgeous posters of each of those 17 reasons, illustrated by 17 different Swedish children’s illustrators, are available for free download from the Swedish Academy for Children’s Books. I was so excited by this discovery that I printed them out before school that morning, and they were so beautiful I laminated them before the end of the day. 

They are available in 20 languages—none of which are Japanese. At first I was disappointed, and then I thought, “What a great opportunity for my students to have a reason and audience for their bilingual skills, as well as for getting them to deeply engage with the reasons—THEY could do the translation! We could post it around school…and maybe even send it to the Swedish Academy of Children’s Books!” Stay tuned on that brainstorm.

What resources do you have for international children's books, child-friendly reasons for reading, and reading displays?