Philosophy Sucks... Kids Right In!: Exploring Big Ideas Using Small Tales from Around the World

Philosophizing -- considering life questions -- stimulates thinking: processing information, reasoning, thinking creatively, evaluating alternatives. Many children are natural philosophers. They observe the world around them from a young age, have a keen sense of right and wrong, and ask endless questions. Stories -- fables, fairy tales, parables -- are a classic device for teaching lessons about life, morality, chance, consequences, and other cultures to audiences both young and old. Philosophy Sucks...Kids Right In is a guide that parents and educators can use to structure and guide this process. Contributors Nel de Theije-Avontuur and Leo Kaniok have collected 40 short stories that encourage children to ponder the themes of happiness, love, friendship, peace, freedom, respect, and equality -- and more. An introductory chart clearly lays out the age groupings the stories are appropriate for, a primary theme, possible secondary themes, and the teaching purpose of the story. Many stories come with discussion papers that suggest areas of exploration with children of different age groups (4-6, 6-8, 8-10, and 10-12) and grades. The open-ended questions encourage self-reflection and stimulate children to experience the stories more intensely and seek their own answers to the big questions of life.

Nel de Theije-Avontuur lives in Deurne in the Netherlands and is a teacher of children with special needs. He specializes in teaching values through stories and gives storytelling workshops.
Leo Kaniok is a publisher and collector of old stories from cultures all over the world. He has published several story collections and his publishing company, Zintenz, publishes gift-cards with stories. He lives in Haarlem, The Netherlands.