It’s a wonderful thing when we can share a sense of family unity through simple things such as reading. When we are reading our children’s books at bedtime we can almost forget the wonderful life lessons they teach us. When we are reading to our children at night we have to go for the classics. With this in mind, we’ve got to choose the right books that come with some of the best life lessons that everybody can learn from wonderful children’s books. What are these lessons?
Helping Others Will Give Our Lives Meaning
We are sometimes forgetting the importance of helping others outside of our household. But the story of Charlotte’s Web, where Charlotte rescues Wilbur by spinning messages in her webs pushes the idea home. The lesson that Charlotte learns that she was trying to make life better by helping Wilbur is something that we can all benefit from relearning time and again. Whether this is donating a few cans of food to the local food drive, or we are giving friends advice to go seek legal help via a car accident lawyer, the importance of helping other people will always give our lives meaning. And yes, while Charlotte dies at the end of the book, she is immortalized through her children and Wilbur will continue to tell the story of how Charlotte was generous and brilliant in life.
Help Those Less Powerful Than You
The Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hears A Who shows just how one small thing can give meaning. When the mayor of Whoville asks Horton for protection and he responds with the attitude that “a person’s a person no matter how small,” this highlights just how important protecting those who are unable to protect themselves can be.
Knowledge is Power
Roald Dahl taught us many life lessons in his work, but in Matilda, we meet someone with superhuman wit but is always belittled by her family. She has a passion for reading, and this becomes her best ally. By reading more, she learns to manipulate ignorant adults. Knowledge is power. And the more books we can read, the more we will learn and the more skills we will acquire. In many circles, reading is still considered a pastime of the geeky. But if we can instill the message in our children that knowledge is power, and we can learn it as well, who knows how far we will go!
Appreciate Every Little Moment
Something that we can very easily forget about as grown-ups, but The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster depicts a young boy, Milo, on an adventure through a phantom tollbooth with his watchdog friend Tock who is, literally, a watchdog. There is a moment in the book where Milo tries to return to the magical land he has been on an adventure throughout the book but he’s unable to, as it turns out he had always been surrounded by beauty and happiness but needed to learn how to appreciate it.
It’s not just the best lessons for children but it’s lessons for people of any age. Maybe it’s time we paid a bit more attention to the book at bedtime?
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