The Obstinate Pen by Frank Dormer is a new picture book about a pen with a mind of its own. Each adult who ends up with the pen finds that it won't write what the adult intends, but instead writes what seem to be the pen's own thoughts and observations, which are often insulting and consistently hilarious.

For example, Uncle Flood wants to write his first sentence with his new pen: The following story is all true. The pen instead writes: You have a big nose!

The book inspires thinking about where thoughts come from, whether we always do what we intend and the relationship between intentions and actions, and the nature of artistic inspiration.

The If Machine

The If Machine, by Peter Worley, was published in 2011 and is full of ideas for motivating philosophical conversations with children. The first quarter of the book is an introduction to doing philosophy with young people and contains many useful general suggestions for introducing philosophy in elementary school classrooms. The rest of the book is made up of 25 units that each include a very short story, a description of the philosophical topic involved (justice, fairness, identity, etc.), and a list of questions and various strategies for facilitating a discussion on the topic. The book is well-written, very practical and accessible, and many of the stories raise philosophical issues in appealing and thoughtful ways. I'm going to try out one of the units with a class of fourth grade students next week.

Who is More Trustworthy: Children or Adults?

Earlier this month at Whittier Elementary School in Seattle, a group of fourth grade students and I had a long conversation after reading Barbara Williams' Albert's Toothache. We talked about the relationship between telling a lie, telling the truth and making a mistake, and that led to a discussion about why the things children say are often less likely to be believed than what adults say. In the course of that exchange, a student commented that adults are seen as more trustworthy than children, and we talked about whether that perception reflects a truth. At the end of the discussion, I suggested the following reflection question:
Are children more or less trustworthy than adults?

Here is a sampling of what the children wrote in response:

"I think that kids, for the most part, are more trustworthy than adults. Adults can lie to kids and we still believe them and so do other adults. Kids can't lie at all or adults won't believe them ever again."

"I think that children are less trustworthy than adults because kids are more immature. Kids like to snoop, while adults are more responsible. Adults are responsible because while kids play and have fun, adults work, do bills and other things for their families."

"I think that kids are more trustworthy than adults are. I think that because kids will lie to protect a secret. This quality of kids is one that adults don't notice."

 "In the end I think that adults would be more likely to not tell a lie. I think this because they have more experience with what can go wrong. I also think it is more likely for adults to think about it before telling someone something confidential. Therefore, I think children are less trustworthy than adults."

"I think children are more trustworthy than adults because lying does not come easy for children."

"When you first think about it, you think, 'Oh, grown-ups are mature, so they are most trustworthy.' However, then you realize that being trustworthy also means telling your true opinion and being able to keep secrets. Grown-ups are terrible at that! . . . However, after thinking about it for an extremely long time (until your head feels like it's going to explode), you realize that it's not really about your age or if you're a grown-up or child, it's about who you are."

Emma

Exploring the nature of artistic inspiration and the relationship between art and life, the picture book Emma by Wendy Kesselman tells the story of Emma, who is seventy-two years old, lives alone with her cat and sometimes is “very lonely.” For her birthday, Emma’s family gives her a painting of her childhood village, and Emma thinks to herself that the painting really doesn’t resemble her memories of her village. She begins painting her village as she remembers it, and goes on to paint many other paintings, which surround Emma with the “friends and places she loved.”

Emma’s artistic inspiration seems to come from inside, from the way she remembers her life. What role does memory play in art? Is the way each of us sees the world unique? Are we then all artists, or does being an artist require some expression of our perspective? 

The book’s illustrations illuminate the changes in Emma as she begins painting. Smiling instead of frowning, she seems to come alive as the story progresses. Can expressing ourselves through art change the way we feel about ourselves? What is the relationship between our feelings and our aesthetic experiences?

Fractions = Trouble!

Claudia Mills' latest book Fractions = Trouble! is about Wilson, who is having trouble with math in his third grade classroom, and so his parents hire a math tutor to help him. Embarrassed by this, Wilson is determined to keep it a secret from everyone at school. Wilson's interactions with his tutor, his brother Kipper, his best friend Josh, and his hamster Pip help Wilson to figure out what really matters to him.

Like all Claudia Mills' books (she is a philosophy professor at University of Colorado who has written dozens of children's books), the story is philosophically rich, generating questions about friendship, knowledge of other minds, learning and education, and the nature of happiness. And it's a great story for figuring out that everyone learns in different ways and that the fact that you don't understand something right away doesn't mean that you can't become good at it!

little blue and little yellow

Another Leo Lionni book, little blue and little yellow tells the story of two friends, both blobs of color, who love playing together, and one day hug each other so much that they both become green. Their parents declare that they are no longer who they were.

Like all the Lionni books I've been reading, this story has great philosophical energy. It makes me think about identity and what it is that makes us who we are - once little blue and little yellow are green, are they no longer blue and yellow? They still feel inside like blue and yellow. Can something change and still remain the same? If you change, are you still the same person? The story also raises questions about knowledge and belief: the parents are sure that little blue and little yellow are no longer themselves, but they base this belief solely on the way the children appear to them. Is that a good basis for believing something? Often things aren't the way they look to us - and yet we persist in thinking we know things because we have seen them. When is appearance a reasonable basis for believing or knowing something?

Boodil My Dog

Boodil My Dog by Pija Lindenbaum tells the story of a child's relationship with the family dog, Boodil, a bull terrier. The child describes Boodil as "brilliant," "fierce, strong and brave," with "nerves of steel." The drawings in the story, however, paint a different picture, as Boodil is shown, among other things, moving very slowly, avoiding puddles, quivering under the couch, and crashing into the narrator's baby brother. 

The inconsistencies between the text and pictures raise many questions - including questions related to how we know what we know, the relationship between perception and truth, and whether we can understand other minds, including the minds of animals. And both the text and drawings are clever and funny. I've found that children love this book and it inspires interesting questions for them.

The Sleeping Beauty

We all know the story of The Sleeping Beauty, on whom a curse is placed at birth. In the story, the 13th of thirteen wise women, angry because she is not invited to the celebration of Sleeping Beauty's birth, announces a curse upon Sleeping Beauty: she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her 15th birthday, and fall down dead. The curse is mitigated by one of the other wise women, who states that, instead of dying, the princess will fall into a deep sleep for 100 years.

The King commands that all spinning wheels in the kingdom be destroyed. After some years, the King and Queen forget about the curse so that on her 15th birthday, Sleeping Beauty is left alone at the place. Exploring the palace, the princess finds a room in which there is an old woman spinning at a spinning wheel. Sleeping Beauty tries it and pricks her finger, falling into the foretold hundred-years sleep.

Sleeping Beauty's philosophical themes include destiny, promises, loss, betrayal, sleep, beauty, awakening, and the nature of time. Why doesn't the King invite the 13th wise woman - does he have a good reason? Why do they royal couple leave their daughter alone when they are aware of the danger to her? Is this a betrayal? Was Sleeping Beauty aware of the curse upon her? Can we escape our destiny? When Sleeping Beauty wakes up after 100 years, is it possible that her kingdom still exists? Can time stop? Where is Sleeping Beauty during the long period of her sleep? Is she the same person when she wakes up that she was when she went to sleep? What does it mean to be "awakened?"

Rumpelstiltskin

I've been re-reading fairy tales and exploring their philosophical potential. So many questions, especially about ethics, are raised by these stories! I just read a version of the Brothers Grimm story Rumpelstiltskin, as retold and illustrated by Paul Zelinsky. The story can be read, of course, as a morality tale about the greed of Rumpelstiltskin and his willingness to take advantage of the desperation of the miller's daughter, who must spin straw into gold or the king will have her killed.

But the story is more complex than that. It raises many ethical, as well as social and political issues. For example, the absolute power of the king. Is his demand that the miller's daughter spin straw into gold, or die, any worse than Rumpelstiltskin's insistence that she keep her promise to give him her first-born child? And once the miller's daughter (who is never given a name) manages (with the help of Rumpelstiltskin) this feat, the king marries her - again, the miller's daughter clearly has no choice about this either. Who is the real villain in the story - Rumpelstiltskin or the king?

Rumpelstiltskin asks the miller's daughter to promise him her necklace, her ring, and then (when she has no material things left) her first child - are the first two requests morally permissible? Should Rumpelstiltskin help her without asking for anything in return? Is it just the final request that is over the moral line? Should the miller's daughter have made this promise? Why isn't she obligated to keep it?

An Extraordinary Egg

Leo Lionni's picture books are wonderful for thinking with children about philosophical questions. I'm working on a paper about Lionni and philosophy for children, and last night I read his An Extraordinary Egg.

In the story, Jessica. a frog, lives with two other frogs. Jessica is "full of wonder," and frequently ventures out on long walks and returns shouting with excitement about what she's found, even if it's "nothing but an ordinary little pebble." One day, she finds what she thinks is a perfect white stone, almost as big as she is. She brings it home, and the other frogs point out that it is not a pebble, but a chicken egg. "How do you know that?" Jessica asks. "There are some things you just know," one of the frogs replies.

Pretty soon, the egg cracks open and a "long, scaly creature that walked on four legs" emerges. The three frogs all shout, "A chicken!" They spend days playing with the "chicken," and the chicken and Jessica become great friends. One day a bird tells the chicken that her mother has been searching for her, and Jessica and the chicken follow the bird to find the enormous alligator that is the chicken's mother. When Jessica returns home, she tells the other frogs that the mother chicken called her baby, "My sweet little alligator." "What a silly thing to say," one of the frogs comments, and they all can't stop laughing.

Like all Lionni's books, the illustrations are marvelous and can themselves raise many aesthetic questions: How do the words and drawings together tell the story? What feelings do the drawings create? How do drawings create feelings? Would the story be the same without the drawings? The words? Etc.

But the story also provokes questions about knowledge and how we know what we know. Why does Jessica believe her fellow frog when told the alligator is a chicken? Why does she continue to believe it even when she meets the mother alligator? Often we believe we have knowledge because of testimony from other people - can such information be knowledge? Do the words of other people give us a basis for believing something? How do we determine which testimony to trust? Does it depend on how the people speaking to us know what they think they know? How often do we hold onto our beliefs even in the face of evidence that they are not true?