February 12, 2025
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Podcast
Podcast – The Appeal of Dark Picture Books
What is the appeal of dark picture books? Do kids want to read (and re-read) books about tougher topics? How do you make these books kid-friendly?
Julie Hedlund leads our Roundtable discussion about dark picture books, what place they have in children’s lives, and why they’re so important (and re-readable).
Books mentioned in this episode:
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- The Rough Patch by Brian Lies
- The Longest Letsgoboy by Derick Wilder and Catia Chien
- Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson and Hudson Talbott
- Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way by Aracelis Girmay and Diana Ejaita
- Finding Papa by Angela Pham Krans and Thi Bui
- Lubna and Pebble by Wendy Meddour and Daniel Egnéus
- The House Before Falling into the Sea by Ann Suk Wan and Hanna Cha
- The Skull by Jon Klassen
- The Cat Man of Aleppo by Karim Shamsi-Basha, Irene Latham, Yuko Shimizu
- The Circus Comes to the Village by Yutaka Kobayashi
Grab some of these books from your local library and share your picks for dark picture books in the comments below.
Listen here:
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Bridgitte Rodguez
February 18, 2025 at 10:44 amThis was such a great topic. I’ve read several of the books mentioned and have requested the others from the library. This also reminds me when I was in elementary school, I bought from the book fair, Pink & Say by Patricia Polacco which was about two boys, one black and one white, fighting in the Civil War. The Black boy dies, and the white one lives but promises to always remember him and share his story. I read that book over and over again. Something about it just spoke to me, that thirty years later I still remember it.