Books About Belonging For Young Children

From home and family to school and peers, everyone needs to feel a sense of belonging.  It’s a basic human need.  The picture books and activities listed below help young children make sense of their worlds and see that we’re all different and that’s okay.

All the World written by Liz Garten Scanlon; illustrated by Marla Frazee; ages 3-7

This picture book is simple, rhythmic, and beautiful and reminds many readers of books by Margaret Wise Brown.  All the World follows a family and their friends through a day of activity.  It shows the importance of things small like tiny seashells to large ones like close family relationships.  It’s perfect for very young children, but adults will enjoy the simplicity of the language, too.  “All the world is here.  It is there.  It is everywhere.  All the world is right where you are.  Now.”

• Activities: Talk with your students about important events, relationships, or objects in their families.  Have them draw something important to their family and tell why.  Encourage them to think how it makes them feel like they belong.  You could do the same thing with events and objects in your classroom.

Be Who You Are written by Todd Parr; ages 3-7

From this bestselling author of It’s Okay to Be Different comes Be Who You Are.  The message is exactly what the title says it is.  “Be who you are!  Be proud of where you’re from.  Be a different color.  Speak your own language.  Wear everything you need to be you.”  The pages are bright and filled with colorful people, places, and things.  On the page which talks about being proud of where you’re from there’s an illustration of a thatched roof house, an apartment, a trailer, a single home, a doghouse, and a Middle Eastern style home.  People are all sorts of interesting colors, and pets and people are shown speaking their own language.  This is a fun book that can pack a powerful punch.

• Activities: Have your students make a page or a whole book showing who they are.  They could use the same arbitrary colors the illustrator in the book uses.  If you’re studying another country, they could draw pictures of what their home and the other child’s home might look like. Encourage your children to be proud of who they are by modeling positive statements.  Allow your students to make the same types of observations.

My Two Blankets written by Irena Kobald; illustrated by Freya Blackwood; ages 6-9

My Two Blankets tells the story of a young girl who leaves her country for somewhere safe. She feels alone in her new world. Everything feels strange even the wind, so she begins to find comfort in a metaphorical blanket of her own words, sounds, and memories of her homeland. After meeting a young girl who teaches her new words and sounds, she begins to make a new blanket from the sounds and words the young girl teaches her and the new memories she is making.  She finds comfort in this blanket, too.

• Activities:  Allow your students to create a blanket of words, sounds, and memories associated with their lives.  Share with the rest of the class.  Talk about what it would feel like to suddenly live in a new country.  What kinds of changes would be the most difficult?  What does the author mean when she says “even the wind” was different?