I discovered the concept of living books by accident.
My four year-old couldn’t get to sleep one night. It had been raining for days, so we couldn’t go to a playground and play and had basically turtled-up in our house. So while we lay together, I began telling him a story about two bunnies named Red Bunny and Blue Bunny whose burrows had been flooded. Some squirrels, seeing the bunnies’ plight, quickly used a pulley-system to help the bunnies out of the flood and up into their homes in the trees. Thus began a friendship that culminated in a huge party thrown by the bunnies to thank the squirrels for their help and hospitality.
My four year-old loved the stories, and thus began an almost-nightly storytelling time. At a loss for new ideas, I decided to tell some stories focusing on some problem behaviors I wanted to work on with him. (Namely asking kids, “Can I play with your toy?” at the playground instead of, “Can I play with you?” And giving up when he couldn’t do something immediately.)
One of the stories I told was about Blue Bunny and his baby sister Baby Blue Bunny. My son hadn’t been playing very well with his younger sister, and so I told him a story about Blue Bunny realizing Baby Blue Bunny was really fun to play with. The next day, to my astonishment, my son was surprisingly nice to his sister, even including her in his play.
Encouraged, I tried again. And again. And I was shocked to see the difference in his behavior after these stories. It sent me on a quest to find more books on the topics I wanted to work on with him. I typed things like, “Perseverance picture books,” into Pinterest, and, “Friendship picture books.” And that led me to discover this concept of “living books.” Books that teach through stories rather than dry facts.
(It also led me to a homeschooling curriculum called “Book Shark,” that I haven’t purchased, but I adore the idea of it and looking into it really got my brain turning.)
I had been trying to teach my son some lessons already about goal-setting, but they weren’t taking. He was bored, not listening, and couldn’t remember what I had said even ten minutes later. I was discouraged, but didn’t give up. Instead, I started using stories to teach him the lessons I wanted him to learn, and was stunned to see how well he took to them. Using entertaining stories helped him pay attention to the lesson, and conversations during and after helped the lesson stick.
It was this discovery that led me to wanting to write my own children’s books. I had never considered writing a children’s book, but I realized the concepts I was trying to instill in my children weren’t on the bookshelves. (That could be because I’m horrible at searching for things online and there aren’t enough hours in my life to go through every book in the library.) And thus, living books led me to writing Red Bunny and Blue Bunny, weekly visits to the library, and a definite improvement in my son’s behavior and understanding.
I haven’t looked back. It had been years since I’d been in a library, but now we’re almost weekly-visitors. (I forgot how much I LOVE the library. Isn’t it amazing being surrounded by all those books?) Using a combination of Pinterest, online searches, and just general bookshelf-browsing, we’ve covered all sorts of topics that I see him incorporating all the time.
If you haven’t tried using stories to teach your kids, I highly recommend it! Kids love stories, so why not include ones that teach them something while entertaining them?
Happy reading!
KC Aubin 