Tender Topics: Picture Books About Childhood Challenges

A reading specialist, an outreach librarian, and a children’s librarian combine their considerable expertise in this essential guide for parents that brings reading, early literacy, child development issues, and picture books together. Advising parents who are wondering how to talk to their young child about difficult topics such as death, loneliness, or fear, this authoritative collection of appropriate picture books makes broaching the subject easier. Arranged by topic, this annotated listing includes more than 300 high-quality, carefully selected picture books that are ideal for opening discussion about tender topics and establishing bonds between generations that can help parents and children better weather the challenges families face every day.

Dorothy Stoltz is the head of outreach services and programming for Carroll County Public Library and the project director for early literacy training and early literacy peer coaching. She also oversees the statewide early literacy peer coaching wiki project. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Elaine Czarnecki is a literacy consultant with Resources in Reading and a teacher in the Johns Hopkins University graduate reading program. She serves as a consultant and trainer for Maryland public libraries and has delivered early literacy training sessions to library systems across the country. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Buff Kahn is children services supervisor at the Eldersburg branch of the Carroll County Public Library. She serves on Maryland Library Association’s children’s services division and helps train librarians statewide on peer coaching best practices. She lives in Eldersburg, Maryland.