Pigeon Post

At a certain point in a young child's life they begin to have accumulated enough of the rudiments of knowledge to actually make some sort of sense out of the wild, awesome and mysterious world which they encountered as an infant. All of sudden they have enough facts to make sense of things and can manipulate those facts to draw their own conclusions. It is as if they have cleared enough of the undergrowth of ignorance to see some of the trees and bushes.

And when they do they begin to have questions. Questions about what happened, when, why, to whom, where, etc. They want more facts, more than just the rudiments. This flowering of curiosity dovetails with storytelling which at its heart is the attempt to know where we came from and why we are here. All stories directly or indirectly are framed by these two questions.

This turning point, where they have moved beyond wrestling with the process of learning and are engaging with the substance of learning is a wonderful moment and conversations between parent and child suddenly take on a richness that did not exist before. The child begins to come into their own as they try and makes sense of things for themselves. They have moved beyond simply accumulating facts and are beginning to interpret those facts.

There is no telling quite what historical event will seize a child's imagination. Dinosaurs and Egypt seem to be perennial favorites but it can be almost anything. The topics of fascination often have an element of something that could not or should not have happened, but did. Something inexplicable to our understanding of how the world works happened. It has elements of conundrum, enigma and mystery. The best books and stories about whatever the event is, combine what happened (history) with how it happened (reference) and engages the child with why it happened (philosophy and religion).

There are three classes of books that can help feed a child's interest in the mysteries of history. The first are collections of essays or chapters about particular events such as Brian Fagan's Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World or Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World or Bill Manley's The Seventy Great Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. These have the advantage of leading them into broader pastures. They may pick up the book to read more about one particular incident but get drawn into other stories along the way. The best of these have good substance and narrative direction.

The second category of books would be almost reference materials. Oddly enough, Reader's Digest does a good job in this arena. Their format, such as with Strange Stories and Amazing Facts, has often been to have small entries of a few paragraphs explaining some item. These tend to be substantive but well written. Unfortunately, the reference type format can be the worst abused though as well. There are an awful lot of books of this sort that are at best a hodge-podge of undigested information, written in different styles by different contributors, stapled together on a backdrop of garish illustrations and distracting side bars.

And then there are the narrative stories. The best of these are simply wonderful. The child is drawn in by the quality of the writing and the drama of the plot but in the process, ends up learning a lot as well. The American author, Walter Lord, was a master at this: A Night to Remember (about the Titanic), A Time to Stand (about the Alamo), Incredible Victory (about the battle of Midway), are each powerful stories so engrossing and engaging that you only later realize you are learning a lot of history as well.

And there are not only non-fiction books to choose from. There are many, many excellent historical fiction stories which engage a child's interest but are factually well grounded and impart a lot of useful knowledge. At the middle of the independent reader level you have such titles as those by this week's Featured Author, Marguerite Henry, (Justin Morgan Had a Horse and King of the Wind) or for older Young Adult readers, there is the phenomenal Flashman series by George Macdonald Fraser from which whole swaths of history can be learned while enjoying the outrageous, laugh-out-loud antics of the fictional protagonist, Flashman.

The best books explaining the mysteries of history tend to be pitched at the older Independent Reader level and the Young Adult level. There are some good picture books but there also tends to be a perilously high level of dross among those books pitched at the younger level.

Effectively kids at Independent Reader/Young Adult level (ten to fifteen years-old) are starting to exert some degree of control over their reading environment - they are following up on what they are interested in, not just what is handed to them. As a parent, sometimes it can be a little frustrating. On the one hand you want them to exercise that autonomy and indulge those interests. On the other hand you want to direct them away from fluff. I find it hard to exercise self-restrain and let them do their own research. I keep wanting to help direct their efforts and shape their conclusions. It requires an aching level of self-control not to interfere too much.

When I was maybe twelve or fifteen, I went through a phase of intense curiosity and interest about the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious feature of the western mid-Atlantic where a disproportionate number of shipwrecks and other incidents are purported to occur. This phase of interest lasted a couple of years in which I ended up reading a dozen books or more on the subject. At the end of it I was convinced that this was much ado about nothing. Yes, there were many fascinating shipwrecks and sea mysteries, just as there were anywhere in the world. And there were more of them in this particular region simply because there were more ships in this heavily trafficked part of the ocean.

One of my sons became interested in the Bermuda Triangle at a much younger age - probably seven or eight. Despite my best efforts to get good books into his hands, he was always coming home from the library with some ham-fistedly written, theoretically fact-based book, discussing aliens, sea monsters, and other absurd theories about the Bermuda Triangle. In part he was too young to easily analyze the information and in part, his intense curiosity was drawing him towards increasingly fringe books that were purveying titillating twaddle.

Not being able to control what he found in the library, the best I could do was to be available to talk about what he was reading and providing some counterbalance to the more nonsensical "information" without appearing to be overbearing or intense. He is still intrigued, but just as with my own experience, the more he has read, the more skeptical he has become. Despite the immense effort of self-control required, it is often best to just let the process take its own course, with confidence that it will work out in the end. That is easier said than done, though.

The historical mysteries in which children become fascinated probably fall into four categories.

• Why Mysteries - These are mysteries where we know what happened but not why it happened. The best example would be the mysterious appearance of the Mary Celeste, found sailing unmanned and abandoned in the middle Atlantic. Why the crew abandoned her remains a mystery to this day but doesn't stop endless speculation and conjecture.
• Unbelievable Mysteries - We know what happened, and how and why, but it just seems so improbable that it is still difficult to comprehend. The existence and evolution of dinosaurs or the building of the pyramids falls into this category.
• Unresolved Mysteries - These are mysteries where we know what happened and we are likely one day to know why it happened but for now we remain in ignorance. Between my youth and that of my children there are a good number of these mysteries that have been wrapped up. For example, the disappearance of the CSS Hunley, after its first successful attack as a submarine, was a mystery when I was a child. In the past twenty years, not only has the wreck of the Hunley been found but it has been retrieved, restored and we now have a pretty good idea of what happened after the attack. Incidentally, this is an instance where there is actually a really good picture book version of this story for younger children, The Story Of The H.L. Hunley And Queenie's Coin by Fran Hawk and illustrated by Dan Nance.
• Finally, there are Wildly Speculative Mysteries - These are stories about events that are uncertain as to whether they even happened or not and if they did why they happened. The chief characteristic of these type of books are that they take a few indisputable facts out of context, add in a large measure of blind speculation and then serve it up as if the proposed hypothesis actually had any correlation to reality. The prime examples of this might be the various writings of Erich von Daniken in such books as Chariots of the Gods. They unfortunately are often prevalent in books for young children.

So what are some of the topics that children become fascinated with and want to learn more about? Listed below are some reasonably common topical areas of mystery, some of which we were gripped by as children, or by which we have seen our own children and those of others become fascinated:

What happened to the Mary Celeste?
Why and how did the Egyptians build pyramids?
Is there really a Bermuda Triangle?
What happened to the CSS Hunley?
How could Cortez have defeated the Aztecs?
Where did the jungle city of Angkor Wat come from?
Was the RMS Lusitania really sunk by a submarine?
How come World War I started?
How were the pyramids in the Americas related to the Egyptian pyramids?
Who was Tutankhamun?
Who were the Mongols, where did they come from and what happened to them?
Why did Roman Empire fall?
What were the seven wonders of the ancient world and what happened to them?
How did writing arise?
Did Troy really exist?
Did Atlantis exist?
What happened to the Anasazi in the American Southwest?
Who built Stonehenge and why?
Where did modern man come from?
Why did the Titanic sink?
Did the enemy soldiers really celebrate Christmas day together in WWI?
Did the Vikings make it to North America?
What was the Antikythera mechanism and did the Greeks invent a computer?
What was the Chinese Fleet and did it really sail the Indian Ocean?
Who was Prester John and did he really exist?
Who first reached/discovered America?
Is it really Noah's Ark on Mt. Arat?
Who built Stonehinge and why?
Did King Arthur really exist?
What happened to the Neanderthals?
Who or what was the Kennewick Man?
Who was Iceman and how did he die?
What were the Dead Sea Scrolls?
What was the purpose of the Tomb of China's First Emperor?
Who built the stone city of Zimbabwe?
What happened to the Lost Legions of Rome?
What were the Nazca Lines for?

It is a little hard to describe what type of books we are looking for here; they have the characteristics of Justice Potters definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it." These are stories where you want to know what happened and why it happened. And once you know, your response is "That's amazing." There is certainly an element of having learned something but more often than not there are elements of adventure, awe, inspiration and wonder. Even when you do have the answers to the who's, the what's, and the when's, you are still left with a sense of amazement.

What historical mysteries captured your reading as a child?

The Story Of The H.L. Hunley And Queenie's Coin by Fran Hawk and illustrated by Dan Nance Recommended

Adventures of the Treasure Fleet by Ann Bowler and illustrated by Lak-khee Tay-audouard Suggested

The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World by Brian M. Fagan Recommended

The Seventy Great Inventions Of The Ancient World by Brian M. Fagan Suggested

The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World by Christopher Scarre Recommended

Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Sal Murdocca Suggested

Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl Highly Recommended

The Mary Celeste by Jane Yolen and Heidi Elisabet Yolen Stemple and illustrated by Roger Roth Recommended

Pyramid by David MacAulay Recommendation

The Lost World of the Anasazi by Peter Lourie Suggested

A Night To Remember by Walter Lord Highly Recommended

A Time to Stand by Walter Lord Recommended

Incredible Victory by Walter Lord Recommended

Vinland Sagas by Magnus Magnusson Suggested

When China Ruled the Seas by Louis Levathes Suggested

The Devil's Horsemen by James Chambers Highly Recommended

Ghost Ship by Brian Hicks Suggested

Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade Highly Recommended

Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub Suggested

What is an immigrant? The jaundiced but always entertaining Ambrose Bierce would have us believe that an immigrant is: "n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another." The more settled Noah Webster states that it is "a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence." Perhaps.

Neither definition really captures what we usually imply when we use the word. An Englishman moving from England to Australia or America in the eighteen hundreds would be called a colonist, not an immigrant. I think the difference is that we imply an element of power to differentiate the two conditions. A person moving from one country to another with the intention to settle may have some condition of power in which case they are considered a colonist as opposed to someone who moves between countries owing to straightened circumstances or seeking new opportunities, but arriving essentially powerless and as a supplicant - these we consider to be immigrants.

Part of the challenge is that many times peoples' plans are ill-considered and unsettled. Among the two million Italian emigrants to the US in the early twentieth century, some 25% ended up returning to Italy rather than settling permanently in the US. This pattern of returnees is not uncommon with percentages ranging from 15-50% depending on the era and the country to which they immigrated.

While we in the US consider our immigrant history to be one of the key historical attributes distinguishing us from many other countries, it is important to remember that there are other countries with significant traditions of receiving serial waves of immigrants including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. Each has a wealth of fascinating immigrant stories.

There are certain commonalities to the "immigrant experience" that transcend both time and place. These common experiences including being at the bottom of the pecking order on arrival in the new country; language barriers; unfamiliarity with laws, customs, holidays, and foods; becoming a minority for the first time by race, ethnicity or religion; and suddenly having one's entire life's accomplishments dismissed or hugely discounted. You might have been a doctor in your home country, but you are not qualified here and are just another laborer.

All of this amounts to putting oneself in a position of uncertainty and powerlessness with hardly any recourse if things do not pan out. Immigrants therefore are, despite all their manifest differences from one another, tied together by a fundamental courage, desperation and even ruthlessness that sometimes frightens - but often inspires - others.

Immigrant stories frequently have huge dollops of loss, tragedy, and sadness. As an immigrant, you not only go to something, but you are also leaving something. The excitement of an immigrant's story arises from engaging with the unknown but the unknown is also a quagmire for trouble and is built on a past loss.

Yet, with this inherent recipe for sadness, there is an irresistible pull about the immigrants' stories because they did make it, they did overcome, they did surmount the odds stacked against them. Not all of them, but many. These people that either chose, or had forced on them, the role of trail-blazers often end up having stories that we listen to and can only hope that, faced with the same circumstances, we would have even half the fortitude, perseverance, and endurance. They are, in short, inspiring stories. They invite us to measure ourselves not against our own comfortable standards, but against more exacting standards of experience where failure is not a matter of discomfort but of life, death and disaster.

I recall one tale in particular. I unfortunately do not recollect the book in which I read it. Having lived in Sweden a number of years in my childhood, it is quite possible in fact, that I did not read it, but heard it as a friend's family story.

It relates the experience of a young Swedish woman in the late eighteen hundreds. She was born and raised in a small farming village and, in the course of time, became betrothed to a young man. Their economic prospects were not good and they determined that he would join the stream of Swedish migrants to America to seek his fortune there. Once settled and with some financial prospects, he would send for her. It took two or three years but at last he had a small farm in the upper Midwest and had saved enough money to send for his fiancée.

She booked passage with her single trunk which was also her hope chest and sent him the details of what she ship she would be sailing, its planned arrival date, port, etc. He would be there at the port of arrival to welcome her to the new country and escort her back across it to their new farm and new life.

After her crowded and uncomfortable trans-Atlantic crossing as a steerage passenger, she arrived in New York only to discover that there was no-one there to meet her. Having full confidence in her fiancée, but speaking no English, having no one to contact and no way to contact him, and not knowing what to do in this unfamiliar country, she sat down on her trunk on the pier and waited. And waited. And waited. Unknown to her, he had been delayed four or five days owing to rainstorms' washing out the bridges his train had to cross to get from Minnesota to New York.

That picture of this young woman, in complete ignorance of her surroundings and her prospects, doggedly sitting there on her hope chest, waiting for the arrival of her love (in whom she had full confidence) is one of such inspiration that it always moves me when I recollect it. Of course he did arrive - eventually. And they did start their new life and I am sure there were many other adventures, but that one vignette is what sticks with me and inspires me.

As a nation built by and of immigrants, we have a marvelous hoard of immigrant stories relating everything from the passage to America (When Jessie Came Across the Sea) to the dawning comprehension of the strange new country in which they have arrived and the eventual process of assimilation (Mama's Bank Account). Every story is wonderfully colored by the circumstances that initiated the immigration (aspiration for new life or freedom or the fleeing of civil unrest or economic poverty), and by the tapestry of cultural baggage brought into the new world.

We glory in the triumphs and mourn the set-backs of these individuals and families. I think our heritage of immigrant stories, told from personal experience within the family, or absorbed through the culture and heritage of children's stories, is one of the things that serves as a flying-buttress to our cultural integrity. In a country as prosperous and wealthy as America, one would expect that there should easily be a degradation of spirit, a Roman dissolution. Yet, despite those expectations and that every generation inherently views the next with a jaundiced eye, all the numbers tell us that our people draw an aspirational spirit and resoluteness from somewhere and I believe it is, in part, that deep bank account of immigrant stories.

Has the immigrant experience changed over the years? In its fundamentals, I do not think so. There are a couple of twists which I suspect have modified it somewhat, though. The first is that the world is that much more connected than it ever was before. With cheap phones and cheap flights, it is far easier to come to a new country and maintain tight ties to the old country than was possible in the past. Presumably this slows assimilation and possibly increases the average returnee rate (number of immigrants eventually returning to their home country.) While this might be true for the individual, I suspect that connectedness has little impact on generational assimilation. I.e. parents may maintain a longer separation from their new host country than would have been possible in the past but I suspect the children will assimilate just as quickly as did immigrant children in the past.

While after a generation or two, immigrants are usually admired, at the time of immigration spikes, there is almost always a negative reaction among the population of the host country - immigrants are seen as a source of crime, dirt, sickness, job competition, etc. The second twist is in terms of how immigrants are viewed. In the past, eventually admiring stories would percolate up after some number of years and the immigrant experience would be admired. I think this is still the case, but there seem to be a higher proportion of books which paint immigrants as victims rather heroes, as passive pawns rather than strong individuals, which dwell on the unfairness of life rather than achievements against odds. I have no data to support that assertion, just an anecdotal sense. I doubt that that view will prevail - it would be a tragedy if it did.

We have put together just a sampling of stories which I hope you will find touching and inspirational. Here's a nod of respect towards the achievements of all those who came before.

Picture Books

Marianthe's Story by Aliki Suggested

Peppe the Lamplighter by Elisa Bartone and illustrated by Ted Lewin Recommended

Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel by Leslie Connor and illustrated by Mary Azarian Recommended

My Name Is Yoon by Helen Recorvits and illustrated by Gabriela Swiatkowska Recommended

Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say Recommended

They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson Suggested

An Ellis Island Christmas by Maxinne Rhea Leighton and illustrated by Dennis Nolan Suggested

Independent Reader

Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes Highly Recommended

Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen and illustrated by Daniel Mark Duffy Suggested

Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse Recommended

The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez Suggested

Dreams in the Golden Country by Kathryn Lasky Suggested

In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Lord and illustrated by Marc Simont Recommended

Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear by Lensey Namioka Suggested

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco Suggested

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan Suggested

Meet Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw Recommended

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith Recommended

All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor and illustrated by Helen John Highly Recommended

Dragonwings by Laurence Yep Recommended

Young Adult

Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch Suggested

Well here is a topic on which I think I can speak with some authority; or if not authority, at least experience. My father's career was in the international oil industry and as a consequence I grew up living in a number of different countries (six countries, four continents), some of the countries more than once. My father was famous for going ahead, renting a house, getting the basics set up to receive the family and my mother coming along afterwards with three children and dog in tow.

At one time we were transferred to Tripoli, Libya and my father had indeed gone ahead. We followed a couple of months later, my mother having packed up everything at our last place of residence (Venezuela I think it might have been), and shepherded us all through to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit family en route to the new posting in Libya. And of course this was all in the days of prop planes with long slow flights leap-frogging from airport to airport. So we were all pretty exhausted when we arrived in Tripoli. It was probably not the most auspicious of circumstances for my father then to have to share a change of plans - "Don't unpack your bags, we've been transferred again." The mean time of moving had gotten longer than the mean time of the assignment. Very fortunately the next destination was England which was sufficiently more attractive than Libya to make up for the disruption.

And that is the name of the game with moving - disruption. Disruption to routines, to certainties, to expectations of what is normal and right. When you are moving from country to country and culture to culture this is especially true. But no matter how far or near the move is, it is still fundamentally a disruption and distressing.

This was brought home to me a number of years ago. When I was fifteen I was in boarding school in England. It was almost an Edwardian throw-back. It was a for-profit school, and there were probably not more than a couple of hundred students, all expatriate kids from all over the world thrown together in an old country manor home in the sweeps and emptiness of East Anglia under the care of two Scottish headmistresses (of a certain age), Miss McFadden and Miss Petrie. They had the particular knack, with their grave miens and clipped Scottish accents, of making every child standing before them suddenly realize they were guilty of something. You stood there in stunned silence, not knowing what you were guilty of but knowing full well it was something.

Being remote from anything, the nearest village was a hamlet of not more than a dozen homes. The kitchen staff, five or six women who prepared the meals, were all local farmer's wives. One of them had a daughter, let's call her Mary, about fifteen or sixteen, who occasionally helped out in the kitchen. The girls in the school became friends with her and she became part of this tight little community.

One day the girls found her in the kitchen, clearly distressed with eyes red and puffy from weeping. All concern and solicitation, they wanted to know what had happened, what was wrong, what could they do to help. The story slowly emerged. Mary had been born and raised in the nearby hamlet all her fifteen years. She had hardly ever been anywhere. Now, her father had taken a new job and they were about to move away from all that she knew and all that she had known, all that was familiar.

The girls of the school were all attentive tenderness and concern. Being expatriates they had all known this experience of moving and disruption, of leaving that with which you are familiar and going to that which you don't know. They could all honestly and genuinely empathize with Mary. And then at some point, someone asked, where is this new town you are moving to? To which Mary answered: the next town over. She was moving about three miles.

In recounting this later, one of my friends, who had been one of the group of girls comforting Mary, said that there was a sort of stunned silence. All these girls were accustomed to moving hundreds and thousands of miles, across continents, religions, languages, cultures. To them, a move of three miles was not a move at all. And then, surprisingly, they seem to have collectively and simultaneously realized, in that particular instant, that it was not distance that mattered - it was the simple fact of disruption that bound them all together.

There is an odd conundrum related to moving with young children. The younger they are, logistically the easier it is to move; you don't have all the complications of deep friendships being left behind, etc. On the other hand, children crave certainty. They want to know what the rules are, who is in charge, and how far they can bend the rules without suffering a negative consequence. They want some predictability in their environment and when you move, you disrupt that rhythm of certainty and predictability.

It shows up in the smallest matters. When we did eventually move to Libya a second time, I was probably in third or fourth grade. We had been living in England and I was coming through the English school system and we had, in that particular year been focusing on spelling. I was no swot but did quite well in school and especially well with spelling owing to the accident of a good memory. We moved to Libya and I and my younger sister were enrolled in the Oil Company School which used an American curriculum and used primarily American teachers.

I cannot relate the anger, frustration and sense of failure that first day. As it so happened we had a little spelling quiz right off the bat. It was a sort of circle competition with the teacher reading out a word and the first student spelling it. If they got it right they stayed standing. If they got it wrong they sat down. Then the next student and the next. Around and around we went with the circle of standing spellers shrinking with each go-around. I was enjoying this immensely. And then my turn came and I was offered a word I knew well. I don't now recall what it was; some simple word such as honor perhaps. But I spelled it the English way as I had learned just weeks or months earlier, honour. Aggghh! - the frustration and humiliation at having to sit down when I knew I had spelled it right. Ah well! Good training in being flexible.

I said above that moving when the children are young is easier. That was poorly expressed. It may be logistically easier when young but that by no means that it is easy. The twenty-four hour journey starting our first international assignment, from Atlanta to Sydney, Australia with Sally and the three kids, aged four, two and three months, remains vividly fresh in my mind.

We have always attempted to position a move with our kids as an adventure - there will be new things to discover, new friends to make, adventures to be had. And that seems to have worked reasonably well over the years. They like to travel and they value the different places they have lived, but they are also very much home-bodies.

And that is one of the benefits of a move, as a shared experience it can bring a family closer together. You are thrown onto your own collective resources in a new environment and can share with one another the triumphs and disasters of adjustment knowing that it is an experience shared. The new neighbor you accidentally slighted in the mall because their face did not register with you in passing one another until too late to acknowledge them, the school rule accidentally broken because you did not know it existed, etc.

Stories that tell a child directly or indirectly what will happen to them as part of a move can be very helpful in acknowledging that there are knowable changes as well as unknowns. A well chosen book can give them a framework in which to understand a move and to make that move their own and not just some cascade of unpredictable events.

For the very young there are some picture books that outline the events of a move and acknowledge the fact that it can be an upsetting change, but that there are good things that come with it as well. The emphasis on the positive is critical. In trying to acknowledge the negative some books tend to dwell over much on the downside. For our first big move we used Stan and Jan Berenstain Bear's series, one of which is The Berenstain Bears and Moving Day which I think strikes just the right balance of acknowledgement while staying positive.

For older children there are stories which are not so much written to prepare them for a move but are about a move happening to the protagonist. I have in mind here Patricia MacLaclan's eloquently moving What You Know First, a beautiful picture book story. Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books are also great stories of a peripatetic life. You read them for the story but it just so happens that there is an awful lot of moving and adjusting to a new life that goes on in them.

What are the stories you would recommend to prepare a child for a move?

Picture Books

The Berenstain Bears' Moving Day by Stan Berenstain and Jan Berenstain Recommended

Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss Suggested

I Like Where I Am by Jessica Harper and illustratde by Brian G. Karas Suggested

What You Know First by Patricia MacLachlan and illustratd by Barry Moser Highly Recommended

The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small Highly Recommended

Alexander, Who's Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Robin Preiss-Glasser Suggested

Ira Says Goodbye by Bernard Waber Suggested

House on East Eighty-Eighth Street by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended

Independent Reader

Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer Suggested

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Recommended

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery and illustrated by Sybil Tawse & M. A. Claus Highly Recommended

The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and illustrated by C. E. Brock Highly Recommended

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Highly Recommended

Heidi by Johanna Spyri and illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith Highly Recommended

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended

Young Adult

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Recommended

Caught in the truly remarkable global changes of the past twenty years, it is easy to lose sight of what has been accomplished as well as the fact that we have been down this road before. India and China in particular, having made the decision some twenty years ago to more or less unleash market forces, have wrought such change as to numb the senses. After several decades of centralized planning and international aid agency handouts and nothing to show for it but increased poverty and enervating famines, both countries have seen such staggering progress that, regardless of what the rest of the world is doing, by dent of their own efforts we are seeing global poverty falling at the fastest rate in living memory.

None of this is easy or predictable and the consequences are not, well, inconsequential - as we can see daily in the prices of food and energy. Taking the long view though, as much disruption as these changes and improvements wreak on all of our lives, the improvements in the lives, health and wealth of all people can only be a good thing in the long run.

How is it that we have been down this road before? Well, in the 1910's and then again after World War I in the 1920's and 1930's the world was surprisingly integrated within the constraints of technology as it existed at that time. Yes it took weeks to steam from Europe or North America to Asia but people were engaged in trade - trade of ideas, art, commerce. People in Europe invested in China and India building factories and railroads. Merchants in India and China exported cloth and steel and other goods around the world. A small handful of Indian intellectuals and artistic talents found their way to Europe and even into the top reaches of academia in Oxford and Cambridge. Some 200,000 Europeans lived in India. Thousands of missionaries worked in China.

You can see this engagement in some of the children's literature of the time with many stories either relating experiences of China, India or elsewhere in Asia (such as Lafcadio Hearn and his collections of Japanese folktales) or incorporating the experiences of having lived there (for example, Kurt Weise who illustrated Marjorie Flack's The Story About Ping, based on his experiences of having lived in China for a number of years).

And then things fell apart. The communist conquest of China, the Indian dalliance with socialism and a planned economy, World War II, etc. basically empoverished and isolated these countries and their wonderful cultures. And now, all of a sudden as it would seem - they are almost all back. The magic and mystery of the orient is again available for our children to explore. With any luck, the wheels won't come off this time.

So our children, I hope, have the prospect of needing (and hopefully wanting) to understand this great swath of the earth which has produced some of the most fascinating history and cultures. Just naming the countries and places evokes a sense of adventure and excitement - The Kingdom of Siam, the lost cities of the Khmer, the temples in Rangoon, the Yangtse River, the South China Sea, the princely Raj's of India, the delicacy of Japanese rock gardens, the Middle Kingdom, the Great Wall, and on and on. It is a veritable cultural smorgasbord, something for everyone and for every sense. Where to start introducing our children to this magical world?

There is nothing so basic in understanding a culture as understanding their language, their idioms and adages, and understanding their folktales.

Language presents some challenges. A number of years ago I was based in Australia and was asked to take on a regional role responsible for a number of practices across Asia. Having grown up in Europe, I was accustomed to an environment of many languages and cultures. I am unfortunately an anti-linguist; I forget (or mangle) languages faster than I can learn them. In Europe I had picked up a smattering of languages and whenever I found myself having to visit another country, I would pick up Berlitz type guide and brush up on the basics.

Having received this new role in Asia, that was my first instinct as well. I need to visit each of these practices in their countries and see what is happening on the ground. To do that I need at least a taste of the language. So down I trotted to the nearest Dymocks to pick up a few language guides. I will not ever forget the humbling sense of bewilderment standing in front of the shelves of local language guides - all were in the local scripts. I literally had no idea of which way was up or what I was even doing. It was a great reminder that the East is a mighty big place.

So, setting aside language as a bridge into another culture, how about idioms and adages? I find them fascinating but experience has taught me that flavoring a family dinner time conversation with idioms and adages and teasing them apart for what they might tell about a culture is a mugs game.

So that leaves folktales and there, fortunately, the pickings are much richer. There is always a challenge in that some folktales can be so far afield from one's own sense of reality, that they can become almost disorienting. As I think I have mentioned on this site before, we encountered this in Australia when reading aboriginal folktales to our kids. They enjoyed a good number of these but there were large swaths of folktales which would simply almost beyond comprehension. It wasn't that they didn't understand the words of the stories, simply that the unadulterated Aboriginal cultures were so fundamentally different that it was a challenge to fit ones' mind into the right perspective.

Fortunately this issue is not as prevalent in most of the major cultures of Asia where there have been fundamental parallels with much of European history which shaped our own folktales. Town versus Country, Rich versus Poor, War and Peace, Longing and Fulfillment, Quests; these are all common themes across the many cultures. In fact, it is fascinating to see some of the striking similarities; a Chinese version of Cinderella as well as even Little Red Riding Hood. Which is not to say that all the tales are familiar. Indeed, there are many that have no parallel at all. But they do tend to be comprehensible and accessible.

One of the wonderful things with these folktales, and the authors and illustrators response to demand for folktales, is that they also often incorporate the distinctive style of art and illustration of that culture as well. While there are good renderings of many folktales from the earlier period of engagement, in the past fifteen years we have seen an increasing volume of really good renderings of different Asian folktales sometimes told and illustrated by Asians, sometimes by Westerners and often by a mixed team one from one culture retelling the story and one from the other culture illustrating it.

Listed below are a number of primarily picture book renditions of folktales from across the many cultures of Asia. I hope you and your children enjoy these selections. Please let us know if there are other favorites we have overlooked.

Picture Books

The Monkey and the crocodile: a Jataka Tale From India by Paul Galdone Recommended

Stories from the Silk Road by Cherry Gilchrist and illustrated by Nilesh Mistry Suggested

The Weaving of a Dream: A Chinese Folktale by Marilee Heyer Suggested

Hush! A Thai Lullaby by Ho Minfong Recommended

I Once was a Monkey by Jeanne M. Lee Suggested

Beautiful Warrior: The Legend of the Nun's Kung Fu by Emily Arnold McCully Recommended

Little Oh by Laura Krauss Melmed and illustrated by Jim LaMarche Recommended

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth Suggested

Basho and the River Stones by Tim Myers Suggested

The Love of Two Stars by Janie Jaehyun Park Recommendation

The Firekeeper's Son by Linda Sue Park Suggested

Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Moss Roberts Suggested

Filipino Children's Favorite Stories by Liana Romulo Suggested

Japanese Children's Favorite Stories by Florence Sakade Highly Recommended

In the Moonlight Mist by Daniel San Souci Suggested

Fa Mulan: The Story of a Woman Warrior by Robert D. San Souci Recommended

The Gift of the crocodile: a Cinderella story by Judy Sierra Recommendation

Asian Tales and Tellers by Cathy Spagnoli Suggested

Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes by Robert Wyndham Suggested

Nine in One Grr ! Grr!: A Folktale from the Hmong People of Laos by Blia Xiong Suggested

The Dragon Prince: A Chinese Beauty and the Beast Tale by Laurence Yep Suggested

The Emperor and the Kite by Jane Yolen Recommended

The Sons of the Dragon King: a Chinese Legend by Ed Young Recommended

Cat and Rat: The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac by Ed Young Recommended

Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young Highly Recommended