When imparting a lesson, there’s a fine line between sharing knowledge and sounding didactic.
But when it’s done right, a lesson imparted via picture book is nothing short of art. It combines our most noble goals as lovers of children’s books: the desire to help kids grow up to be their best selves and the desire to entertain their incredible imaginations. Here are three recent picture books that seamlessly combine those goals, teaching an important lesson (or two!) while entertaining children and adults alike.
 The Troublemaker by Lauren Castillo 2014 Clarion Books The (Main) Lesson: Do unto others… The Setup: A bored boy takes, then grudgingly returns, his sister’s stuffed bunny. When it disappears again, of course the boy is blamed. The Resolution: A sneaky (real) raccoon has been stealing the kids’ toys--both the stuffed rabbit and some of the boy’s own toys--and the boy learns how his sister felt. The Troublemaker is an elegant combination of lesson and art, particularly since the lesson it sets out to teach is one of the oldest out there. But the drawings and the humor elevate this lesson into a terrific picture book. The drawings are sweet and colorful, with lines and a color palette that are reminiscent of a child’s drawings. Moreover, the story is funny—a reader can see what’s happening even as the boy can’t, and the final drawing of the raccoon, snug in bed with the toys, is adorable. It succeeds in entertaining first and imparting a lesson second. |  The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water by Gemma Merino 2014, NorthSouth Books Inc. The (Main) Lesson: It’s okay to be different. The Setup: A baby crocodile does not like water, which leaves him out of his siblings’ swim club. The Resolution: He finds out he’s actually a dragon, and he takes his croco-siblings flying and hot-air ballooning. The lesson in this book has some wonderfully subtle elements. Although the main character feels like an outsider, he is never teased for being different, even though he’s a little lighter in color than his siblings and wears red socks and (eventually) a swim ring. The siblings are perfectly accepting of their brother’s differences, trying to throw a ball to him and not looking put out when he holds up the line on the diving board. In fact, no one seems to notice that he’s different except him (and the reader). It’s a nice touch that he really does turn out to be entirely different—as in a completely different species—but he and his siblings keep right on hanging out together anyway. |  What If...? by Anthony Browne 2013, Candlewick Press The (Main) Lesson: Things are rarely as bad as we fear they will be. The Setup: Joe is going to Tom’s party. While attempting to find Tom’s house, nervous Joe and his mom have a running conversation (Joe: "What if there are a LOT of people there?" Mom: "There might be...") and look in the window of each house they pass. The Resolution: Joe has a terrific time at the party. It’s not the resolution of Joe's fears that will keep kids coming back to this book, it's the imaginative presentation of the other houses. While the drawings of the pair’s conversations are black-and-white, sparse, and truncated onto one page, the interior of each house is colorful, slightly bizarre, and given lots of space. This contrast renders the walk--and, more importantly, the cataloging of Joe's concerns--secondary to the story. The perfect pairing of mundane lesson and other-worldly art perfectly mirrors Joe’s, and a reader’s, experience. The pre-event anxieties are forgotten, or at least play a minor role in the child's memory, after an exciting new event. So too does the message of Browne’s book play a minor role in the fun a child will have reading it. |
Gemma Merino, Anthony Browne, and Lauren Castillo artfully bring together entertainment and education in their books, providing all the rest of us a refresher course on how it’s done.
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