What Do You Stand For?: For Kids: A Guide to Building Character

Discover the positive qualities inside you - and strengthen your character every day.

What Do You Stand For? For Kids helps kids ages 8-13 discover what character means, recognize the positive qualities they already have, and explore character traits they can continue to strengthen. Through true stories, thought-provoking "What If?" situations, inspiring quotations, and engaging activities, kids learn about good character while considering their own choices, relationships, and everyday experiences.

• Discover Your Character Strengths: Kid-friendly checklists and activities encourage children to think about who they are, what's important to them, and the positive qualities they want to develop and strengthen.
• Explore Positive Character Traits: Learn about caring, citizenship, cooperation, fairness, forgiveness, honesty, relationships, respect, responsibility, and safety - and discover why these qualities matter in everyday life.
• Think Through Real-Life Choices: "What If?" situations invite kids to consider choices where the best answer isn't always clear. Children can think, write, discuss, or role-play different situations while learning to listen to others, consider different ideas, and disagree respectfully.
• Learn from Stories and Activities: True stories about children introduce each character trait, while quotations, definitions, background information, and hands-on activities help kids understand and practice what they're learning.
• Build Your Character Muscles: Work on one character trait for a day, a week, or a month; read the chapters in order; or jump directly to topics that spark interest. Reproducible activities and checklists give kids additional ways to explore themselves, their relationships, daily responsibilities, and safety.

A Flexible Character-Building Resource for Kids: Perfect for independent reading or shared use with parents, teachers, and other caring adults, What Do You Stand For? For Kids encourages meaningful conversations about values and choices. At home, in the classroom, or with a group, kids can strengthen positive character and discover the kind of person they want to become.

Barbara A. Lewis is a national award-winning author and educator who teaches kids how to think and solve real problems. Her students at Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah, initiated the cleanup of hazardous waste, improved sidewalks, planted thousands of trees, and fought crime. They instigated and pushed through several state laws and an amendment to a national law, garnering ten national awards, including two President’s Environmental Youth Awards, the Arbor Day Award, the Renew America Award, and Pledge and a Promise Environmental Award. They have also been recognized in the Congressional Record three times.

Barbara has been featured in/on many national newspapers, magazines, and news programs, including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, Family Circle, CBS This Morning, CBS World News, and CNN. She has also written many articles and short stories for national magazines.

Her books for Free Spirit Publishing—What Do You Stand For? For Kids, What Do You Stand For? For Teens, The Kid’s Guide to Social Action, Kids with Courage, The Kid’s Guide to Service Projects, The Teen Guide to Global Action, and The Survival Guide for Teachers of Gifted Kids—have won Parenting’s Reading Magic Award and been named “Best of the Best for Children” by the American Library Association, among other honors.

Barbara has lived in Indiana, New Jersey, Switzerland, Belgium, Utah, and Poland. She and her husband, Larry, currently reside in Park City, Utah. They have four children: Mike, Andrea, Chris, and Sam, ten perfect grandchildren, and a forest of shy deer, a bold moose, busy squirrels, and feathered friends.