OUUC Religious Education

Are you looking for a good children’s book about Peace, Social Justice, World Community, and the Equality of the sexes and races?  Each year books that promote those causes are awarded the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and you can look at their site for lists of the winning books.

We’ve been learning about our Unitarian history and the Transcendentalists, and there is certainly a rich literature by and about them!  These pioneers of movements from environmentalism to feminism lived fascinating lives, as examined in the book American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever.

For the 10 year old and up crowd, there is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, giving us a slightly romanticised view of their lives in the mid-1800′s.  We also read Into the Deep Forest with Henry David Thoreau, which uses the journals Thoreau kept on his journeys to weave together a camping and hiking adventure for young readers.

We also read several picture books:

Mr. Emerson’s Cook

Father, We Thank You

Henry David’s House

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg

Henry Climbs a Mountain

and Henry Builds a Cabin

They were all wonderful, and are available through the Timberland Regional Library system if you’d like to check them out.