15 Exceptional Character-Building Stories You Won't Want Your Child to Miss!

"Good books not only capture the imagination, but cultivate the conscience as well"  

-from Books That Build Character

Can reading aloud good books to your children really help develop their character? According to William Kilpatrick, one of the authors of Books That Build Character, the answer is "yes!"  

Are you uncertain about how to choose "good books"? Read my past post here.

Below I've highlighted some excellent points Kilpatrick makes about how stories can affect character development:

- Stories create an emotional attachment to goodness, or a desire to do the right thing.

- Stories provide a wealth of good examples to kids - the kind of examples that might be missing from some children's day-to-day environments.
- Stories are a good way of introducing "codes of conduct" to kids.
- Stories can help kids make sense out of life.

Books about Bravery and Duty
1. The Bravest Dog Ever: The True Story of Balto by Natalie Standiford.  Click on the highlighted title to read my past review of this book and others about the Iditarod Race.
2. The Emperor and the Kite by Jane Yolen.  A quiet, yet brave young princess rescues her father from a prison tower.

3. Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop. This simple but true story brings new meaning to the concept of duty. Abbie is a courageous young girl who is determined to keep her father's lighthouse lights burning while he is away on the mainland, despite the fact that a terrific storm threatens to sweep her family's little house into the sea; that her mother is in bed sick and must be kept warm; and that even the fate of their chickens is in her hands.

4. Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield by Rae Bains.  Clara's childhood biography.  She showed remarkable courage and vision as she overcame great shyness to dramatically serve her fellow man.
5. Ride on the Wind by Alice Dalgliesh.  The story of Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

6. Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully. Beautifully illustrated Caldecott Medal book about a young girl who learns to walk on a high wire and dramatically helps a high wire veteran overcome his feat to go back on the wire

Books about Friendship
7 & 8. Betsy-Tacy; and Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace.  Originally published in 1941; set in Wisconsin around 1900. The series - based on the author's life - is set in a small town in Minnesota at the turn of the twentieth century. The first book, Betsy-Tacy, takes place with Betsy and her best friend, Tacy, being five years old. By the second book, they've added a new friend, Tib. The series follows the girls' friendships all the way through to Betsy's wedding! There is so much heartfelt humor, detail, and realistic emotion in the writing, you really get a feeling for life at the turn of the century - from school days and friendships, to falling in love and travel. Girls will have fun growing up with Betsy, Tacy, and Tib as their friends!

9. The Milly-Molly-Mandy Story Book by Joyce L. Brisley.  Originally published in 1928.  Another delightful novel, set in an English village and its surrounding countryside.

Books about Sacrificing for Others
10. Leah's Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich. Set in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, this is the story of family love and the kindness of neighbors. A girl of 11 is willing to sell her beloved pony so her nearly bankrupt family will not have to lose their farm.

11. Miss Fanny's Hat by Jan Karon.  A plucky 100-year-old lady becomes willing to offer her favorite hat for her church's fund-raising auction. (3-8)

Books about Faith and Endurance
12. The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  How the Ingalls family, living in a new town on the South Dakota prairie, survive a harsh seven-month winter filled with blizzards.
13. More than Anything Else by Marie Bradley.  Beautifully and poignantly told story of how Booker T. Washington learned to read at the age of 10. Click the highlighted title to read my past review.
14. The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, by Alice and Martin Provensen. A story about the first solo flight across the English Channel in 1909, and about building the plane that made the flight. (4-8)

15. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. "Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it." There never was a sweeter, more unselfish heroine than Sara Crewe, a young girl from a wealthy family who humbly and heroically endures the scorn, hatred, and jealousy of the headmistress and some of the other students at her English boarding school while her father is away in India. (8 and up)

So many more out there!  What are some of your favorite character-building stories?

TIPS FOR SELECTING GOOD BOOKS

So - you've decided to start reading aloud to your children and you're at the library (or bookstore, or an online source, such as Amazon). Here are some guidelines that William Kilpatrick gives for selecting good stories, from BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER, A Guide to Teaching Your Child Moral Values Through Stories:

1. Think back to stories that had a positive impact on you when you were growing up. There's a pretty good chance that the same stories will have a similar effect on your child.

2. Choose a book in keeping with your values, not simply on the basis of its reputation.

3. Try to distinguish between issues and virtues. Many contemporary children's books focus on trendy issues rather than character development. You want your child to acquire strength of character before he acquires a lot of secondhand opinions. It's one thing to have an opinion on an issue such as immigration, and quite another to develop a habit of helping those you have an opportunity to help. Having enlightened opinions is no substitute for having character. Good books should reinforce qualities like courage, responsibility, and perserverance rather than offering prepackaged opinions on divorce, euthanasia, and the like.

4. Look for books where the author has an interesting story to tell, not a message to convey. Many good books deal with contemporary issues, but the issues are integrated with the characters, setting, and plot; and they are people centered, not problem centered. The characters are real. We are gladdened by their victories and saddened by their sufferings. They are not there just to teach a lesson.

5. Context is crucial. Character-building books are not simply about good people doing good things. Moral books may deal with immoral behavior. The question is not whether unethical behavior is present but how it is presented. The hero or heroine may give way to temptation, but a good book will show the real costs of such a choice.

6. Allow some room for growth. Although you want to be careful about choosing books that are way over your child's level, it's okay to challenge them by reading somewhat above their level. You definitely want your children to learn to extend themselves through reading. How do you determine which books will help your youngsters grow? A simple rule of thumb is to look for books in which the main character grows. As your child becomes involved with the protagnonist, he vicarioiusly shares in that character's development.

7. Choose books that are fun to read aloud: The above guidelines are not to suggest that books with a moral theme are the only type of book you and your child should read! There are all types of books and all kinds of reasons to read them: for suspense, for humor, for the beauty of the language, for the pleasure of wordplay and nonsense rhymes. There is no discernible moral in GOODNIGHT MOON; TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET; THE JUMBLIES; or THE CREMATION OF SAM MCGEE, but it would be a shame to deprive your child of the pleasure they bring.

"To the extent that the well-made-thing provokes a responsive, corrective, self-examination, it works to educe from us an ongoing, active and answering creation--an answer that performs our longing to wholeness and reconciliation. One might say that, in attending to such art and in answering it with substantive response, we make our hope matter." -Scott Cairns, Poet and Professor of Engish (from "Art and the Meaning of Creation", published in The Huffington Post, June 1, 2010).

HOW CHOOSING GOOD READ ALOUD BOOKS CAN HELP CULTIVATE YOUNG SOULS...

BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER, by William Kilpatrick and Gregory and Suzanne M. Wolfe, is a wonderful guide for parents, grandparents, and teachers who want to choose worthwhile and imaginative books for children. Honestly, if you could only buy one book on the subject, this would be the one I'd recommend! It's full of good children's stories that are as satifying on an adult level as they are on a child's. The recommended reading list is a comprehensive guide of book summaries, grouped by age level (young, middle, and older readers) and literary genre.

Here are some more of the authors' thoughts on why reading good stories with a moral dimension can help cultivate young souls:

HOW CAN READING ALOUD GOOD BOOKS TO CHILDREN DEVELOP THEIR CHARACTER?

- Stories create an emotional attachment to goodness, or a desire to do the right thing.

- Stories provide a wealth of good examples to kids - the kind of examples that might be missing from some children's day-to-day environments.
- Stories are a good way of introducing "codes of conduct" to kids.
- Stories can help kids make sense out of life.

HOW DO GOOD STORIES HELP CHILDREN LEARN RIGHT FROM WRONG?

Good writing in stories can touch kids on a level where it really matters - their imaginations - by giving them mental pictures: "images". Pictures have a way of staying in children's memories long after parents explanations and admonitions have worn thin. So one of the benefits of good read alouds, whether based in real life or fantasy, is that they save the parent from doing all the reminding! And through the power of the imagination, children can vicariously participate in the stories, sharing with the hero/heroine's choices and challenges.

A great example of this for young readers is The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter. What child will forget how Peter disobeyed his mother, got sick from being wet and cold in Mr. McGregor's garden, and had to go to bed..."while Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper"! (My kids asked for this story over, and over, and over...)

Or, for older readers, what about all the life lessons learned by David as he comes of age in the novel David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens? They will definitely develop an emotional attachment with the young David, as he learns about friendship, kindness, love, and forgiveness from the many colorful characters he encounters!

Here are a few exceptional titles we might have missed or never attempted to read aloud, if it weren't for the fact that they were recommended in BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER:

The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Jester
Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander
Carry on, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham
The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig
Barry the Bravest St. Bernard, by Lynn Hall
Book of Virtues, by William Bennett
Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Clooney
The Bully on Barkham Street, by M. Stoltz
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

WHAT DO I MEAN BY "GOOD BOOKS"?

"Good books not only capture the imagination, but cultivate the conscience as well" - William Kilpatrick, author of GOOD BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER

If you're thinking, "I'm not into preachy morality books", don't worry - neither am I! This blog is not about books and authors whose main purpose is to moralize. A good storyteller should be first, someone who has a story to tell. But that is not to say that good literature does not teach us...

As my kids got a little bit older, I really began to realize the importance of the concept that "just because a book is a good read , it might not be good in the deeper sense of the word." I didn't only want "readable" books that would capture my kids' imaginations. I wanted to find books that would be good for their souls.


Where did I come across this concept? From two books by William Kilpatrick - WHY JONNY CAN'T TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG, and BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER. In them, he says that the context in which behavior is portrayed in a story is what's important: "character building books are not simply books about good people doing good things...the question is not if unethical behavior is present, but how it is presented."

For example, my oldest son David was really drawn into the Goosebumps series for awhile. The books were admittedly suspenseful page-turners (teachers even said: "a great way to get kids reading") but, in my opinion, there was really no other redeeming quality to them. They were formula horror stories for kids. (Think Stephen King, written "Babysitters Club" style).

After a few, Goosebumps was all my son wanted to read! I coined them to be "junk food in book form". (Not a good daily regimen for a reading diet!) I had lots of other options for David to read, so I made the suggestion that if he sustained a "diet" of good literature from our book lists, I'd let him indulge in a Goosebumps book once in a while.

Luckily, I read BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER later that year, and discovered a book series by John Bellairs that not only satisfied my son's interest in scary stories, but was described by Kilpatrick as "very well written and undergirded by a moral vision". (Remember: "capturing the imagination and cultivating the conscience" is the goal, not just finding a "good read"). Was I a happy mom? yes!

More tips from BOOKS THAT BUILD CHARACTER in my next post...