by Karen B.Winnick

History Helps

The essential is hope. There are many trying situations that we can struggle through if we have hope that things can perhaps get better. The process of writing is in itself a struggle to arrive at this human understanding. It is almost a metaphor for dealing with the difficulties we face in life. I enjoy writing stories about history because it is a way to arrive at some basic human truths. Showing, through stories, that things that happened long ago are not so different from events of today is a way of saying that the lessons of history can help us to make better choices. I think it was the Australian author Mem Fox who said that “writing a picture book is like writing ‘War and Peace’ in haiku.”

Karen B. Winnick is the author and illustrator of the historical picture book Mr. Lincoln’s Whiskers and most recently Barn Sneeze.

 

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How Books Tell the World’s Bad News to Children

The articles in this special section:

Beware Sentimental Tripe

by Jane Yolen

Truth Soothes

by Susan Rich

Heroines Overcome their Demons

by Gail Carson Levine

Children: Stronger Than We Think

by Shira Geffen

Bad News from the Start

by Ellen Handler Spitz

Every Child Imagines Orphanhood

by Gail Hareven

Kaddish as Magical Incantation

by Susie Morgenstern

Cry for Someone Else

by Esther Rudomin Hautzig

History Helps

by Karen B.Winnick

Struggles of Underdogs

by Sonya Sones

Transmitting Determination

by Dorit Orgad

No Brainwashing

by Yehudit Kafri

Hope After the Holocaust

by Ruth Minsky Sender

Pain Is a Teacher

by Julius Lester

Forget Bibliotherapy

by Johanna Hurwitz

War in a Picture Book?

by Fran Manushkin

Discovering Hatred

by Leslea Newman

Don’t Plant Seeds of Despair

by Sami Michael

Between Hopes and Reality

by Etgar Keret

The Power of Anger

by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso