Books are Perfect Toys
Image by Катерина Кучеренко from Pixabay
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
Toys provide children with tools for imaginatively acting out their current dreams and envisioning their future participation in the world. They can help children understand and engage in society and expand beyond the isolation of their family homes to encounter cultures and vistas far different from their own.
In an article, “How to Diversify Your Toy Box,” published in The New York Times in August 2020, author Shanica Boswell calls upon parents to consider how well their children’s toys and books provide a reflection of what so many of us hope will be a new perspective on issues like race, gender, religion, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and more. Boswell shares how she considers that every toy or book choice to be an opportunity to add to her child’s potential paths to joyful success in their real and unfolding worlds, suggesting a positive goal for every parent when adding to their kids’ bookshelves. Another author, Ana Consuelo Matiell, champions the same concepts in her book, Positively Different: Creating a Bias-Free Environment for Young Children. According to the US Department of Education’s Educational Resources Information Center, this book provides “…elementary school teachers, parents and other caregivers of children up to the age of 10 with practical suggestions for creating a supportive, bias-free learning environment in the classroom or at home.”
Toy companies can readily change the complexion of dolls, but children need actual insights into the lives of those whose skin color, race, cultures or ethnicity are unlike their own. Books can portray lives in different geographic regions of the world with different cultural and family living circumstances and offer windows to the larger world. They offer families a focal point to come together for discussion and reflection. They can provide opportunities for adults and children to share what they have believed to be true and whether that personal truth fails to comport with the realities in others’ cultures portrayed in those volumes. Resulting discussions invite the sharing of adults’ and children’s candid confusions and wonderment over the life patterns of those unlike themselves.
In addition to exploring the fanciful worlds available through stories, creating a bookshelf of nonfiction books that fully represent the world is a laudable parenting goal. Each book can offer an opportunity, not to intrude on imaginative play, but to enhance play with “tools” that invite children to wonder aloud, ask questions, explore and ask for more books about real information.
The natural surprises about how each of our lives can be so different from book characters and the worlds we find exploring reality can nurture growth and maturation of young readers along with their parents and teachers.