Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) lessons offer a reflective space for children to articulate their learning in these areas, learning which develops as often outside of school as within.

Picturebooks can offer a rich medium as well as a safe space for SPHE lessons and the important yet challenging conversations that emerge.

Firstly they allow a discussion of friendship, conflict, struggle, norms, points of view, difference and injustice in a distanced way, thus allowing sensitive issues to be discussed without direct disclosures about the children’s own lives.

Secondly they can bring the world into the classroom in a way that allows the teacher  mediate discussions about those global tensions which children are exposed to but may be overwhelmed by.

Thirdly they offer an empowering stimulus for drama, reflection and discussion, creative writing and cross-curricular research, teaching and learning.

We  identified ten SPHE themes (identity, feelings, decisions, friendship, safety, peace and conflict, family, citizenship, global children’s narratives and the environment) and exemplified each theme with five picturebooks.

In writing discussion questions for these picturebooks and their associated themes, we were guided by a wish to scaffold for children what Martha Nussbaum describes as ‘narrative imagination’ in her book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities published in 2010:

‘This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have …. So we need to cultivate students’ ‘inner eyes,’ and this means carefully crafted instruction in the arts and humanities — appropriate to the child’s age and developmental level-that will bring students into contact with gender, race, ethnicity and cross cultural experience and understanding.’

All fifty picturebooks have been published since 2010 in order to present up-to-date examples of contemporary international literature for young people, especially in light of the 2016 SHPE Network conference theme of change over the last 100 years.

We have been asked if some of these books would frighten children or if the scenarios they pose are too complex. We rely on the professionalism of teachers to choose the timing and pacing of content as well as the suitable level of scaffolding of the learning. But in a world where so many children live without food security and so many are displaced, we believe that those who live in relative security need to know about the power relationships in which they live and the possibilities for change.

In inviting children to imagine the lives of children in all the complexity of a different context and consider how we are related across time, place, and privilege, we want them to articulate ethical responses to the lives of others and live consciously as global citizens. Ultimately our hope is that an exploration of all these books could support children develop more compassion, more agency and a search for justice.

Note: this feature is based on titled ’50 Picturebooks to Change the World!’, a workshop document produced by Thérèse Hegarty and Patricia Kennon, Maynooth University, for the SPHE Network conference in November 2016.