Health & Fitness
"Me...Jane" and what a good biography can do
A good biography can inspire your child (and you!) to dream bigger than before. Here's a picture book to get kids outside, loving nature, and following their passion.
Biographies are more than just books kids “have to” read for a school assignment. Good biographies show us how people’s lives in other times and places can be so different than ours, and yet still give us the sense that we all share common experiences. They can inspire us to live lives larger than we thought we could.
Me… Jane by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown & Co., 2011) is a fantastic picture book/biography for animal lovers. Jane grew up watching the birds, the squirrels, and the spiders with her stuffed chimpanzee, Jubilee. She observed, she drew, she climbed trees: "it was a magical world full of joy and wonder, and Jane felt very much a part of it." Jane grows up to be Dr. Jane Goodall, and the photo at the end where Jane’s dream of working with real chimpanzees comes true is inspiring.
I read Me…Jane to a Brownie troop who came in for a storytime about “girl power”. I loved how Me…Jane showed excerpts from Jane Goodall’s actual journals she kept as a child, full of drawings, puzzles, and interesting facts about nature. I showed the girls that journaling is a great way to preserve important ideas and information as well as a way to record thoughts and feelings. I gave each of the girls a notebook and art supplies. We gathered a bunch of nonfiction books we found interesting, and wrote and drew in our journals ideas we wanted to remember. I told the girls to save these journals so when they’re grown up, they can look back and see how, like Jane, the passions of their youth inspire the lives they’ll lead as adults. Bring your children to the library to find books on topics they love, and encourage them to journal about what they find interesting. Who knows where those childhood passions may lead?
