What are barriers?
Barrier (noun): a fence or other obstacle that prevents movement or access.
Barriers are all around us but barriers don’t have to be a physical object we can see.
Barrier (noun): A barrier is something such as a rule, law, or policy that makes it difficult or impossible for something to happen or be achieved.
We all have barriers or personal boundaries for ourselves and others. Society also has lots of different types of barriers.
Barriers can be a very difficult idea for children to grasp because they are constantly working out where these barriers are and what their own boundaries are. Books are a great way to talk about personal space, private and public parts of our body, good and not-so-good behaviour. Beyond that are the big ideas around barriers that may not impact on you, as an individual, but impact within society. These barriers are even harder to talk about as small children are very self-centric until they age and develop. Reading is a great way to help children develop empathy and reading is also a great way to broach this idea.
In the world today, we can see the impact barriers in society are having. These barrier may take the form of immigration policy or physical barriers, laws that make certain lifestyles illegal or alter the expectations and opportunities that exist for small pockets of society. This is a really big idea, they are ideas that adults struggle with and make judgements about and change their minds about. It’s not an easy idea to introduce to children. To that end, the books I’m talking about today are all about those big barriers, the ones that separate one place from another, or that separate people from being free to move around. The power of books is that they don’t have to be about a wall in America or Brexit, or Polish policies or Australian politics, they can be about this one idea in the book and the book will tell us what happens at the end.
In the book the barrier is set-up (in most cases a physical one) and the consequences are easy to see, they are easy to understand because it’s about one concrete thing. Then a decision is made on how to fix the issues that are raised. In this way, books allow children to interact with ideas in a way they are ready for even if the real life adult versions are so complex.
Books
The Wall by Giancarlo Macri and Carolina Zanotti
A story of a kingdom that’s better together. In this moving and valuable story, a king banishes anyone who looks different than him and builds a wall to keep them away. His kingdom was once flourishing with singers and sculptors, dancers and astronomers, and everyone in between. Now, most of the people are gone. Once he sees how lonely his side of the wall has become, he realises where he went wrong and gains a new appreciation for his diverse and talented kingdom!
This book is great for a few reasons but mainly the design. In the middle of the book is a hard cardboard wall that pops up between the two kingdoms when the King decides to build a wall, the pages are cut around it so the wall remains as he calls back sculptors and engineers and singers. Then when the King decides to knock the wall down, the wall in the book disappears. This use of design allows kids to really see the division that is happening. The use of colours is wonderful and reinforces what each group does but also the idea of diversity. Each face has an expression and you could spend a lot of time looking at the different faces.
There are lots of reasons people build walls and fences. Once it was to protect the village from invading armies and now we see them used more and more for segregation – ideological or racial or otherwise. These barriers do not even need to be a physical creation but much like the King we can look at history and realise that the separation of one group from another means that we miss out on something, that openness and inclusion adds to the vibrancy of life.
Queen Celine by Matt Shanks
Celine Beaufort was an ordinary girl. She did ordinary things, On ordinary days, in ordinary ways. But every now and then, Celine was a Queen, of a kingdom by the sea. Celine Beaufort is queen of what she is quite certain is the most beautiful rock pool in the world. It’s perfect. And to make sure nothing ever changes, she decides to build a wall around it. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a royal mistake. As self-proclaimed ruler, it’s up to Celine to right her wrong and restore her rock pool to its former glory.
Celine is an ordinary girl who is sometimes the Queen of a seaside kingdom (a small rock pool), however Celine makes the mistake of thinking that she can protect her kingdom from ever changing if she can just build a fortress between the rock pool and the ocean. But as time passed, Celine noticed that her kingdom was no longer as magnificent for though nothing had changed…NOTHING COULD CHANGE. That’s not a good thing for a rock pool which needs the twice-daily inflow of sea water to bring fresh water and food and clean out the rock pool. In fact, the inhabitants of the rock pool began to escape. Celine also noticed that other kingdoms were thriving and with that comparison she came to the realisation that she had made a mistake.
We all have things we want to protect, that we want to keep the same forever but nothing in life stays the same forever and coming to terms with change, with the fact we cannot control the world around us, and that change is actually necessary to the octopus in the rock pool and to our country and to our lives, is an important one for everybody. This book allows children the opportunity to learn these things along with Celine.
The Wall In The Middle of This Book by Jon Agee
A knight who feels secure on his side of the wall that divides his book discovers that his side is not as safe as he thought, and the other side is not as threatening.
This book is funny, and designed to allow children to be more knowledgeable than the main character – a knight. This knight is scared of what’s on the other side of the wall and that seems to make sense – on the other side is: a rhino, tiger and gorilla (I think we can all agree they are amazing animals you might not want to be alone with). The wall in the middle of the book is to keep the left side of the book safe from the right side, as the knight explains. But the reader will see the water rising, they will see the crocodile. We find out that the most scary thing on the right side of the book is the ogre. But then we see the knight get swept into the water that as been steadily rising. We see them saved by the ogre and we see what happened to all those little fishes, and the big fish that ate them – all on the ‘safe’ side of the wall.
This book explores one of the main justifications and causes of wall building…what’s out there isn’t safe and we are going to get hurt. But the knight learns that the thing we are afraid of (the ogre) might just be a great friend we haven’t met yet.
Book like this are great for starting a conversation and developing visual literacy.
All of these books deal with physical barriers. These barriers impact on interaction and intermingling.
Next blog I’m going to talk about Rules which are really just those metaphorical barriers we talked about at the start.
I don’t have rhymes or a craft around putting up barriers but I would always encourage playing with blocks and construction materials to build walls because it’s great for gross motor skills, cause and effect, balance, and hand-eye co-ordination as well as reasoning and language development.
What I am going to encourage is taking a little bit of time to check out a book or two they might not have read before and that deals with a topic you might not know about because one of the themes that runs through the books in today’s blog is uncertainty or fear of the unknown and reading about groups that are different to us is a great way of learning about different people, cultures, and places. The more we know about others the more likely we are to be open to meeting new people, experiencing new things, and not building those barriers. Therefore, this week I’m recommending some inclusive reading…enjoy and let us know of any books you think we should include.
If we read about as many people and situations as we can the more we will know and the more we know the more places we can go (I love Dr Seuss – he has a message for everything).
