Picture Books, Teenagers, and Tears
Quick: tell me the last time you were in a room full of teenagers and the majority present were crying. Oh, and it’s a room of freshmen, an even mix of boys and girls. And they just took a final exam and want nothing more than to get going with their summer.
Not. . .generally a time for tears.
Enter the picture book.
This past school year, I had the pleasure to teach an amazing group of young men in women in my 9th grade English courses. We read together. We wrote together. We laughed together. We shared our ups and downs together. We grew together. We learned together.
But we only cried together twice.
Once was in January, as we were reading a handful of 2016 picture books so they could be informed voters when it came time to choose their book award winners at the end of the month. They decided that they had to include picture books in the list of award categories. I certainly wasn’t going to get in their way.
Do you remember 2016 picture books? My students and I will remember one in particular: Ida, Always by Caron Levis and Charles Santoso. This, our runaway award winner, is the quiet, unassuming story of two polar bears at the zoo: Ida and Gus. Then Ida gets sick. And she’s not getting better. My spine is tingling and my eyes are tearing up just thinking about this book and how carefully and beautifully it talks about death and dying.
When we finished the last page of this book, the room was completely silent and still, save for the tears running down our faces. I heard a couple muffled sobs, one of which was from a typically stoic young man whose grandpa had passed the previous summer. A box of tissues was passed around like it was a life preserver. The conversations we had were deep. The text-to-self and text-to-world connections abounded. The discussion of craft, word choice, and even comma placement was beyond that of any other shared read we had that year -- and we had read Homer, Shakespeare, Lee, and Steinbeck.
The picture book held power that we hadn’t experienced in any other format.
The second time we cried together was at the end of the year. The students had known for a few weeks that I wouldn’t be returning to the school, as my family was moving halfway across the country. It was a tough few weeks. I truly loved those students, and they seemed to like me.
So on the last day, after they had finished their exam, we had a little celebration. Someone brought in cake, we had snacks, and just enjoyed each other’s company one last time.
Then, it was time to bring out the picture book. I wasn’t sure which one to choose. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Is a good one, but they all knew it already. I thought of revisiting some of our favorites from the course of the year. But I settled on one they maybe didn’t know. I chose I Wish You More by Amy Krause Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld.
If you don’t know this book, go find it and read it. If you don’t know of the life of Amy Krause Rosenthal, start with this website and follow any of the links from there.
What you need to know now, though, is that this book perfectly summed up the feelings in the room in a way that no other text could. The poem that is the text and the illustrations that bring it to life freed us to feel the emotions our words could not express. When I finished, as tears were flowing, a young man stood up in the back of the room and said, “Do you need a hug?” I did. We all did. And so we hugged. And we cried.
These moments are among my favorites of the year. They were raw. They were emotional. They were real. And they were brought out by seemingly the most unassuming of things: a picture book.
So, to all those who create picture books, on behalf of all of us lesser humans: we need the work you create. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
*****
Brian Wyzlic is a former classroom teacher from Michigan-turned-Education Technology Specialist in Brandon, Manitoba. He believes in the power of the human connection to be the catalyst to positive change. Pictures books, certainly, have a powerful role in that. He tweets at @brianwyzlic and can usually be found with his wife, chasing their 2-year-old around the kitchen, while their 7-month old watches and laughs.
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