Rachel Bright and Jim Field

Everyone wants their kids to be confident, brave, teachable, determined, and friendly. I’m starting to realise that, kids (or mine, anyway) don’t seem to carry these traits naturally, they need a little help learning and practicing. It also seems that giving them instructions about what to do, and probably too often what not to do, doesn’t really cut it.

That’s why I’m alert to really good picture books that will teach these positive character traits in an entertaining and fun way. And I think I’ve found 4 such books that I’m sure I will refer back to often when trying to teach my kids about resilience, achieving dreams, helping others and changing to more positive attitudes. As a matter of fact, as I type, we already have some of the text from the books in a picture frame on our kitchen wall.

The kids love them.

Jim Field’s illustrations are completely wonderful. They are sophisticated, detailed, full of colour and life. They really capture the various settings, giving beautiful images for kids to transport them to places like the tundra and the outback. We have read quite a few of Jim Field’s other works and these are very much my favorites.

Rachel Bright’s rhyming and rhythmic words are equally brilliant. The only thing I can think to say to give you an idea of what her writing reminds me of is Julia Donaldson with an even stronger moral lesson. Julia Donaldson writes wonderful stories, but Rachel Bright’s are more like fables.

The 4 wonderful books in this series are:

The Lion Inside

The role of a parent is to guide, protect and teach their children, despite this, I sometimes feel like it is politically incorrect to tell children they need to change certain aspects of their personality. Kids often get the message that they are just fine the way they are.

This book helps kids see a really valuable lesson that sometimes if we want to achieve our dreams – big or small – most likely we need to make changes. Often those changes will be related to how we see ourselves, our attitudes and our choices.

The Koala Who Could

If you have a kid who is static, afraid of change, resistant to new situations, then this might be a fun and funny way to address the issue. Kevin is a Koala who just can’t let go of his tree, he just can’t ‘leaf’ his comfort zone.

This is a great one for Australian kids too.

The Way Home for Wolf

This is my favourite of all these. The messages that kids could learn are multi-layered and really touching.

Wilf wants to be a leader, he wants to be important, in charge and grown up. He’s the perfect candidate for a lesson about depending on others, which is just what readers will get from this book.

The Squirrels Who Sqabbled

I really like the juxapostion of the two squirrels, Bruce and Cyril. While they look similar, their outlook is very different. But despite that they manage to join forces and find that together is better. Friendship can be found in those who think differently to us.

I might just buy my own copy and rename it ‘The Siblings Who Squabbled’ to send a less subtle message to my kids.