Each week we assemble a collection – a bouquet, if you will – of books you can read for yourself, or use to build into a display in your library. As always, the books we link to have info from Amazon.com. If you click a link and then buy anything at all from Amazon, we get a small percent of their profits from your sale. Thanks!! We really appreciate the assistance!
November is National Gratitude Month! And libraries are pretty much always in the kindness business. While we’re having a global pandemic, and hundreds of thousands of people are dying across our country, the idea of kindness is even more important.
We encourage everyone to #ChooseKindness. Wear a mask any time you are out of the house. Obviously. Stay home whenever you can. Keep a social distance when you have to be out. These are simple things to do. They are literally the least all of us can do for our community.
This is going to be the biggest event in all of our lifetimes. People will be talking about this for hundreds of years. When the next generations ask what we did during the pandemic, I want to be able to say I #ChooseKindness. I wasn’t a selfish jerk, who cared so little for the lives, health, and safety of my family, friends, and community that I had to make things worse for everyone. Do what you can do to make it a positive experience.
I am very, very tired of reading that we are the most divided we have ever been. That is clearly not true. And really: everyone always wants all of the same things. We all want food, shelter, good schools for our kids, jobs we aren’t going to lose on a whim. Everyone, everywhere, at every time in history, wants these things. It is worth remember that when you listen to people telling you how very different, alien, and scary other people are. We all want the same things – and kindness will be one of our tools for getting there.
Let’s enjoy some books on kindness together this week! Share them with your community! Do some good displays this week! Send us pictures – we would love to see your #ChooseKindness materials!
If You Plant a Seed, by Kadir Nelson
The bestselling book about the power of one kind act from Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Award winner Kadir Nelson.
“Timeless and delectable.”—School Library Journal
If you plant a carrot seed . . . a carrot will grow.
If you plant a cabbage seed . . . cabbage will grow.
But what happens if you plant a seed of kindness . . . or selfishness?
With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness, by Houston Kraft
Spread meaningful kindness every day with these anecdotes and actions that can help bring change to our lives, our relationships, and the world.
Practicing kindness is an essential step in helping to repair a world that has grown to be more divisive, lonely, and anxious than ever. But with quotes like, “Just be kind” or, “Throw kindness around like confetti,” we’ve oversimplified what it takes to actually demonstrate kindness in a world crying out for it.
Deep Kindness pairs anecdotes with actions that can make real change in our own lives, the lives of others, and throughout the world. Diving into the types of kindness the world needs most today, this book takes an honest look at the gap between our belief in kindness and our ability to practice it well—and shows us how to put intention into action. Exploring everything from the empathy gap to the skill of emotional regulation, Deep Kindness is perfect for anyone who believes in a kinder world and recognizes that there is a lot of work to do before we achieve it.
Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community, by Born This Way Foundation Reporters and Lady Gaga
For Lady Gaga, kindness is the driving force behind everything she says and does.
The quiet power of kindness can change the way we view one another, our communities, and even ourselves. She embodies this mission, and through her work, brings more kindness into our world every single day.
Lady Gaga has always believed in the importance of being yourself, being kind to yourself, and being kind to others, no matter who they are or where they come from. With that sentiment in mind, she and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, founded Born This Way Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a kinder and braver place. Through the years, they’ve collected stories of kindness, bravery and resilience from young people all over the world, proving that kindness truly is the universal language. And now, we invite you to read these stories and follow along as each and every young author finds their voice just as Lady Gaga has found hers.
Within these pages, you’ll meet young changemakers who found their inner strength, who prevailed in the face of bullies, who started their own social movements, who decided to break through the mental health stigma and share how they felt, who created safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, and who have embraced kindness with every fiber of their being by helping others without the expectation of anything in return.
In one story, you’ll read about a young person with an autoimmune disease, who after being bullied at school, learned how to practice self-love and started an organization with the mission of educating others about the importance of self-love, too; and in another story, you’ll meet a young person who decided to start a movement to help eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraged others to talk about their feelings openly and honestly, a reminder that kindness and mental wellness go hand in hand.
Not only were we moved by these individual acts of kindness, but we were also touched by the many stories of organizations, neighborhoods, and entire communities that fully dedicated themselves to helping those in need and found new, innovative ways to make our world a kinder and braver place.
Individually and collectively, these stories prove that kindness not only saves lives but builds community. Kindness is inclusion, it is pride, it is empathy, it is compassion, it is self-respect and it is the guiding light to love. Kindness is always transformational, and its never-ending ripples result in even more kind acts that can change our lives, our communities, and our world.
Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out–and Never Say Diet Again, by Rebecca Scritchfield
Imagine a graph with two lines. One indicates happiness, the other tracks how you feel about your body. If you’re like millions of people, the lines do not intersect. But what if they did?
This practical, inspirational, and visually lively book shows you the way to a sense of well-being attained by understanding how to love, connect, and care for yourself—and that includes your mind as well as your body.
Body Kindness is based on four principles.
WHAT YOU DO: the choices you make about food, exercise, sleep, and more
HOW YOU FEEL: befriending your emotions and standing up to the unhelpful voice in your head
WHO YOU ARE: goal-setting based on your personal values
WHERE YOU BELONG: body-loving support from people and communities that help you create a meaningful life
With mind and body exercises to keep your energy spiraling up and prompts to help you identify what YOU really want and care about, Body Kindness helps you let go of things you can’t control and embrace the things you can by finding the workable, daily steps that fit you best. It’s the anti-diet book that leads to a more joyful and meaningful life.
The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life, by Piero Ferrucci
The popular guide to living with kindness now includes a new chapter, introduction, and exercises in this tenth-anniversary edition.
When The Power of Kindness first appeared in 2006 it thrilled and challenged readers with one audacious promise: Your acts of generosity and decency are the secret to a fuller, more satisfying life. Kindness is not some squishy virtue but the very key to your own happiness.
With nearly 125,000 copies sold, TarcherPerigee is celebrating the book’s tenth anniversary with this new edition, featuring a complete new chapter by Piero Ferrucci on the theme of “Harmlessness,” which joins his other chapters on virtues such as “Honesty,” “Warmth,” and “Loyalty.” In addition, Ferrucci contributes a substantial new introduction and selection of techniques, meditations, and exercises.
This tenth-anniversary volume is perfect for new readers and for lovers of the original who want to re-experience its wisdom and power.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, by Jamil Zaki
Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an “empathy deficit.” Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don’t succumb to burnout.
Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.