A Bowl Full of Peace. Stars of the Night. Shoham’s Bangle. The Tops of the Trees.
Each of these picture book titles in the AmazeWorks Courageous Children book set contains what author Caren Stelson identifies as an “emotional golden thread”: an object or symbol that unlocks a story, bringing historical events down to a human level. The golden thread opens a window into someone’s experience, no matter how different it is from our own.
Caren Stelson is the author of two picture books in the Courageous Children book set: A Bowl Full of Peace: A True Story and Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport, which gives the book set its name. Caren believes storytelling is the most powerful way to nurture empathy and inspire the courage we need to build a more peaceful world.
A Bowl Full of Peace follows six-year-old Sachiko during the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in WWII. It starts by introducing the emotional golden thread: Grandmother’s bowl. Throughout the book, we see this bowl on Sachiko’s dinner table almost every time a page is turned. Miraculously, Grandmother’s bowl survives the atomic bombing without a crack. Until Sachiko’s death in 2021, she commemorated the loss of her family members to the bombing each year on August 9th, melting ice chips in her grandmother’s bowl. Today, Caren Stelson continues the ritual.
Stars of the Night tells the story of Jewish children who, organized by the humanitarian efforts of Nicholas Winton, board a train to flee Czechoslovakia during WWII, leaving their parents behind. The emotional golden thread is in the title, honoring one mother’s words: “Let the stars of the night and the sun of the day be the messenger of our thoughts and our love.” Throughout the book, the courageous children call, whisper, and pray to the stars of the night and the sun of the day.
As adults, caregivers, and educators, we face the daunting task of explaining violence we ourselves can’t comprehend to children we want to shield from harm. Emotional golden threads, like a bowl or the stars, can bring large-scale injustices down to a child’s level of understanding. They help us navigate conversations about tragedy with kids in ways that build empathy, hope, and courage.
“I think that’s part of being a courageous parent or courageous adult–to be able to open up those topics and allow children to open up,” Caren says. “It’s almost like you’re unzipping your heart and helping children unzip theirs.” Courage can be cultivated in small and large moments, ranging from leading a difficult but invaluable conversation to boarding a train without your parents. Stories can lead the way.
Today, across the Twin Cities, we are grieving tremendous loss after the school shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church. Like the children in Caren’s books, children channeled the courage to protect each other. We mourn that they were ever asked to summon that courage.
How do we move forward? How do we send our children back to school? We begin by cultivating courage alongside them—grasping firmly at hope and believing that, together, we can build a better world.
Caren describes courage as a muscle. “You take small steps, and you practice, and you learn to just get stronger with those muscles when it’s time for you to really do what you need to do.” Sachiko embodied this truth. She spent fifty years building her courage muscle. After decades of grief, her ritual with her grandmother’s bowl gave her the strength to share her story, ensuring children everywhere could learn from her experience.
The Courageous Children book set provides six picture books as a tool to help navigate hard conversations with children, using emotional golden threads to nurture empathy and build courage. Both Caren Stelson and AmazeWorks believe in the power of storytelling to inspire action toward a more peaceful world. Caren turns to Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb, offering these lines as an emotional golden thread of light and hope during dark times:
“For there is always light,
If only we are brave enough to see it,
If only we are brave enough to be it.”