Why I started Stories for Growing.
I have two kids, a five-year-old and a three-year-old. I started this site because I was sick of picture books that seemed to model the behavior I didn’t want from them.
Where it started
For me it was Llama Llama Red Pajama. At bedtime Baby Llama calls for his mama, and when she doesn’t come right away he works up to screaming and stomping until she rushes upstairs. I remember thinking: isn’t reading this going to reinforce that tantrums are OK?
Then I read research suggesting that showing children the behavior you want may work better than showing them what not to do. In one study of 268 children aged 3 to 7, a story where telling the truth was praised made children about three times as likely to own up to peeking at a toy. Pinocchio and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where lying ends badly, did no better than a story about something else.
Plenty of popular picture books work the way Llama Llama does, with nearly every page on the tantrum, the fib or the grab and the fix in the last spread. When we went looking for books about lying, most of the well-known ones spent almost all their pages on the lie and a page or two on the truth. Book lists are sorted by topic, and a topic list can’t tell you that.
How we choose
We start with books that parents and educators already recommend. Every book page names who recommended it and links to what they wrote.
Then we look at what the characters actually do through the whole story, and how many pages each behavior takes up. A meltdown or a fib can belong in a good book. If it fills most of the pages and the better choice only turns up at the end, the book stays off that shelf.
It also has to be a book your child will ask for again, so we check professional reviews and parent ratings before it goes on a shelf.
There are 142 books here across 33 values. Browse by value for the things you want to build over months and years, or by situation for something that happened today. Everything is chosen for reading together with children aged 3 to 7.
What a book can and can’t do
A good book gives your child an example worth copying. It can’t promise a change in behavior.
I haven’t read every book here cover to cover. Each book page says where the recommendation came from and how far we’ve checked the story, under “Sources and review status.”
Dave