Refugees and Migrants/Poverty and Hunger

Barron's     2017/2018

32 pages     Children non-fiction

How do you raise empathetic children? I believe that you raise empathetic children by inviting many kinds of people into your home, practicing grace and empathy in your daily life, and by helping children understand that there are many kinds of people and that because we are very fortunate, we must help those who are not so fortunate.

Recently, Barron's Educational Press published the first two books in their series, Children In Our World. The two that have recently been released are Refugees and Migrants  and Poverty and Hunger. Racism and Intolerance and Global Conflict are coming in 2018. 

I was particularly interested in the book Refugees and Migrants, because of my activities with Justice for our Neighbor, which is a ministry of the United Methodist Church. Additionally, my grandchildren have refugee children in their classrooms, so they wonder about them and don't understand why they don't speak English and need special help in their classrooms.

I found these books to be very helpful in explaining difficult experiences to children. The text is easy to read with a topic on each page. In the Refugees and Migrants book, some of the topics are Leaving Home Behind, How Do They Travel, and Talk about Your Worries. The last two pages of text in each book allows children to "talk about it" and How Can You Help? These are important additions to a fact-based book because children are naturally empathetic and want to help. 

Recently, the mother of my grandson's friend, Frederick, came close to being deported back to Nigeria. Everyone in the daycare was extremely worried about the situation, and Adela, 6, was trying to understand why this could happen. Last week when I read Refugees and Immigrants to her, she immediately identified with Frederick's situation and explained to me that Frederick's mother had gotten a card that said that they could stay in the United States. 

Every Christmas, we have a family project of purchasing ingredients and putting together snack kits for a charity called Kids Food Basket, which is run by a family friend. We have tried to do other projects, but this one works best for us. The children love to go shopping for the kit ingredients and to put the kits together. Then, we take whichever children are available to the headquarters of the charity and deliver our project. Before we do the project this year, I am going to read Poverty and Hunger to my grandchildren to bring the message home.

I also appreciated that there is a table of contents, a glossary, and an index in each book. They are valuable additions to any elementary classroom and social studies curriculum. You might also appreciate the book The Journey by Francesca Sanna. It expresses in fiction what Refugees and Immigrants expresses in fact.