September 11th is never going to be an easy day. Some people I heard have called it International Peace Day, on our calendar it is printed as Patriots Day. I like both of those. On the second and fourth Tuesday of every month I do a bookclub for 1st to 3rd graders (theoretically, we've got homeschoolers so some 5 year-olds sneak in there, if they read the book and participate, they're fine). This September 11th was a second Tuesday. Normally I choose a simple chapter book, occasionally a non-fiction book. They read it before book club, we do some discussion, a game/activity, and often a craft. Then over a snack, I read the first few pages of the next book and they take it home with them. When I realized my book club would fall on September 11th, I had two choices, ignore it or do something about it. I am me, so I chose do something about it.

I chose three books that dealt around the topics raised by 9/11, the children were encouraged to read any two of the three. The books I chose were September Roses by Jeanette Winter, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein, and The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter. The first book most completely talks about the 9/11 tragedy, but in a way a child can understand. The second book tells the story of how in the 1970s a tightrope walker walked and danced between the towers with a rememberance to the fallen towers at the end. And the final book tells the story of an Iraqi librarian who helped to save books from her library (which eventually burnt) during the war.

Some of the parents were nervous, one mother wanted her son to start book club, but decided to wait until after this session. I understand. I was nervous about it too. During the summer my numbers had dwindled to about 11 or 12 kids per session. This session I had 17! A lot of them were new, or this was only their second time. So it was really chaotic. We talked (very briefly) about 9/11. I let them volunteer what their parents/teachers/etc had told them, and summed it up as a "very sad day". (They said the towers fell down, it was a cop out, but it was fine.) Our introduction is always "your name, your age, some random fact". This week's random fact was when was the last time you did something nice for someone without being asked. Then I talked about how the events of that day six years ago made a lot of people think about how we could change our world for the better. And we talked a little bit of that. They all shared ideas about how doing little things in their area (pick up litter, etc) can help make the whole world more peaceful. Around the Gerstein book we talked about civil disobedience (it's a stretch, it's against the rules for the tightrope walker to go between the towers), and when it is okay to not follow the rules (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, jr., stressing that most of the time you should follow the rules). We were going to talk about remembering things and memorials, but we never got to it because we spent so much time on how we can be peace people and change our world.

Then we played a game around The Librarian of Basra. I held up a variety of books two at a time. In each hand there was a different book, and the children had a split second to decide if they could only save one, which one would they save. They ran to the side of the room to indicate their choice. It's fun, very visual to see how the group splits, and they loved it. The hardest choice for most of the kids was Harry Potter versus Magic Tree House. Next we made peace people out of pipe cleaners, ate snack (which sometimes relates to the book and this time was just yogurt in those little tubes kids like), and read from the next book (The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet by Tony Abbott). It was a crazy thing, but it went well. I don't think anyone would have minded had I ignored the holiday, but I think the parents felt that this handled the situation properly for a group of children who were toddlers when the towers fell.

It's funny because even with this plan, I let myself forget a little that it was 9/11. When I was in the car, with the radio on, and they were replaying some coverage of that day set to music, than I remembered. And I allowed myself to mourn again a bit for all those lost.

I wrote up in our library's email newsletter a little thing for parents about using books to help your children deal with tough events. I worked hard on the wording because I didn't want to be condescending (you MUST talk to your child about 9/11 and this is the ONLY way to do it). Read below if you would like...

( using books on tough times )

[x-posted to BornLibrarian]