Here are 10 of the books featured in the Creativity Book Guide, along with a video read aloud and some thoughts on how they explore the character strength of creativity. 1. Cherries and Cherry Pits By Vera B. Williams The story follows a little girl named Bidemmi who spends the day playing with her friends and re-imagining the world around them. For example, when they come across a pile of cherry pits, they use them to imagine a "pit park," complete with slides and swings. When they see a tall, skinny tree, they imagine it as a "high wire tree" where they can practice their circus skills. And ..read more

Recently I reached out to author Nell Cross Beckerman, an author who has published a few gorgeous nonfiction books—like Caves and When the Sky Glows—that offer a sense of vastness of the natural world and inspire awe and wonder. When I asked Nell to recommend some of her favorite books evoking awe, she recommended How to Make a Bird by Meg McKinlay and Matt Ottley, a book that left her in a “wondrous daze.” I also found it to be a beautiful book with visceral poetic prose and detailed ink drawings that together inspire appreciation of beauty and imagination about the world around us. For kids ..read more

Ask any parent or teacher and they will agree: empathy is one of the most important social and emotional skills for kids to develop. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others and to respond with care and compassion. Kids high in empathy are able to more easily make friends, communicate authentically, and show respect for the experiences and emotions of the people around them. Empathy is also an important component of many character strengths, including: Kindness: being empathetic often involves showing compassion toward others. Social intelligence: Understandin ..read more

How do kids learn about what it means to be a good person? In many ways, this seems a natural part of parenting—through our conversations, modeling, and family values, we show and teach kids about what it means to be moral and have strong character. And, for some kids, character education is also part of the school day, infused into core curriculum, school-wide initiatives or social emotional learning (SEL) activities. After school, and on the weekends, many clubs, church groups and extracurricular programs guide kids toward developing empathy and a moral code as well. Kids are most likely to ..read more

When I first started learning about character strengths, I was surprised that “love” was listed as a strength. Love was something I thought of as an emotion or action, something you feel or do.  Along with kindness and social intelligence, love is a character strength of humanity and it means: our capacity to love and be loved. When we strengthen and maintain our reciprocal relationships with warmth, emotional connection, we are exercising the character strength of love. While many young children lack the developmental capacity to display some character strengths early on, and must be tau ..read more

I just finished reading Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki and am preparing some things to donate. One of my priorities this year is to live more simply. Things beget more things and it’d be nice to whittle down what we have to what we need or most appreciate. When I shared a few pages of the with book my eldest, I could see the wheels turning in his head. The book raises a few questions clearly. What are you without your stuff? Where does your identity come from and how do your things (toys, clothes, books) shape it? Do we control the objects around us or do they control us? Is it easy to clean ..read more

Positive psychology is the study of what’s going well in our lives and how we can build on that to flourish and increase well-being. Studies show that most of our character strengths are correlated with well-being. Out of them, gratitude and love of learning stand out as the strengths that independently predict increased well-being with love, honesty, hope and humor next in line. Our search for meaning is also associated with well-being. Whether through our relationships, work, values or spiritual practice, we feel a sense of happiness, health and resilience when our lives are connected to a g ..read more

While working on a recent post about creativity, I realized how difficult it can be to find children’s books that explore sensitivity as a positive trait. Too often, sensitivity shows up in books as something to overcome, manage or fix. Sensitivity certainly comes with its challenges but I think of it more as a strength or a refinement. As Susan Cain wrote in Quiet, sensitives “tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.” Their environment is important. There’s the Swedish term of orkidebarn which means “orchid c ..read more

Sharon Dennis Wyeth is the author of many meaningful and thought-provoking stories. I recently reached out to her about Something Beautiful. This is one of the first books that came to my mind when exploring the character strength Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence. Sharon Dennis Wyeth Sharon Dennis Wyeth is an award-winning author of over fifty books, including: Something Beautiful, a classroom classic that has been in print for 25 years; A Piece of Heaven; Evette: The River and Me and many others. Read more about her and work at her website. Something Beautiful is a special book that spe ..read more

I’ve been exploring Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence this month. In a prior post, I explored what this abstract strength actually means and why it’s important, and highlighted beautiful children’s books that can be used to explore specific qualities of this character strength. I also reached out to a few authors whose books evoke a sense of awe and wonder, and asked them to share some of their own favorite children’s books that do the same. I was so happy to read their thoughts on beauty and books and will share them with you here, too. First up, favorites from Nell Beckerman. Nell Cross ..read more