’Tis the season when my children and many of their Manhattan friends will receive gifts from Santa, their grandparents, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, friends, godparents, cousins, and neighbors. They will receive so many gifts that some toys will sit piled up in the corners of their rooms, unopened, for months after Christmas or Hanukkah.
For the holidays, my 11 year-old son’s book club took on the theme of giving. It seemed the perfect time to turn to Chelsea Clinton’s new young adult book It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going to put the season’s gift-orgy into perspective. The boys read the chapter entitled, “$32 a Day: Poverty in America,” which covers topics such as hunger, homelessness, and minimum wage in a way that is digestible for sixth grade readers. Clinton explains:
In 2013, more than 45.3 million Americans, including approximately 14.7 million kids, officially lived in poverty. For a family of two adults with two children, this meant they had a yearly household income of less than $23,550. For a single adult, it meant less than $11,490 a year. That works out to a little less than $32 a day… In many places across the U.S., $32 would buy about two large pizzas. So while $11,490 a year or even $32 a day may sound like a lot of money to you [kids], it actually isn’t enough to cover the basics for life in America.
The book does an excellent job of helping children imagine what these statistics mean in the daily life of a poor child: what it feels like to wear the same shoes for a year even after they no longer fit, how difficult it is to learn while chronically hungry, how anxiety-producing it is to move from bed to bed when the family home is lost. The beauty of Clinton’s book is that, while it lays out some incredibly heart-breaking topics, it also offers hope. Clinton suggests multiple ideas for how kids might work to tackle poverty issues themselves.
The boys in our group were particularly struck by an effort Clinton describes, called “Brickshare.” Brickshare was born when a young, industrious boy in California started collecting extra LEGO pieces from friends and from his own toy chest to donate to kids in shelters. It has since grown into a much larger organization.
Following this little boy’s lead, our boys came to book club with $30-40 of their own allowance, tooth fairy, and birthday gift money. After discussing “$32 a day” over doughnuts, we walked to Mary Arnold Toys, our small, local toy store. Each boy spent his money to buy gifts for children in need. They walked into Mary Arnold’s imagining that they would buy big LEGO sets or name-brand items. But they were amazed to see how little $40 buys in a Manhattan store. They discussed whether it was better to buy a nicer toy to give to one child, or several smaller, less impressive gifts that could go to a greater number of kids.
The folks at Mary Arnold’s also had some helpful advice that got our boys thinking:
- Consider not buying toys with tons of pieces for homeless children who might be moving frequently.
- Consider not buying toys that require other things to be purchased as well, such as batteries.
- A plush toy or doll is especially nice for children who move around a lot, because that toy might become a steady friend to snuggle each night.
The boys invested a lot of time and energy into deciding which gifts would be most appreciated. It was heartwarming to see their genuine giving spirit in action. I believe it’s important to bring public service into children’s lives long before they start high school, when volunteering sometimes becomes motivated by the wrong reason: to pad college admission applications. The employees at Mary Arnold’s were so happy to see children using their own money to give to others that they gave our kids a discount.
The boys walked away with a variety of fun toys—from a doll with a bath set to a Nerf gun to a construction toy to a Sesame Street character to a box of Playmobil. They then proudly brought their gifts to school to donate to the annual Larry Morales Toy Drive at the New York Common Pantry, a holiday project started by the late husband of a teacher at their school. The toys will be sent, unwrapped, to the pantry, where parents in need will be able to select gifts suited to their kids’ tastes and interests. Last year, the toy drive provided gifts to over 1000 children. The mission of the New York Common Pantry is to reduce hunger throughout New York City while promoting dignity and self-sufficiency. The organization provides pantry items, as well as hot meals, year-round, and could use your book club’s help at any time.
If you’d like to introduce community service to your child’s book group during this season of giving but don’t have a toy drive happening near you, spend some time with your kids on Donorschoose. This website enables people to fund projects that teachers and schools across America are unable to undertake for lack of resources. Perhaps your kids would like to pool their money to purchase drums or circle time rugs or library carts for schools in need. Or you might choose something from Chelsea Clinton’s “Get Going” lists, like collecting and mailing LEGO pieces to Brickshare or donating food to your local food bank.
While I encourage you to try It’s Your World for your next book club, I recommend you only tackle one chapter at a time. The book covers so many problems facing humanity in such depth that it would be emotionally overwhelming to many middle grade children to read it in its totality. The next chapter we will read will be “Time for School”—about the right to education and how it is at risk in communities around the globe. We will follow up by taking a field trip to organize books donated to Project Cicero, an annual book drive to create and supplement classroom libraries in under-resourced New York City public schools.
If Chelsea Clinton’s book isn’t right for your group, here are some other reading ideas:
- For younger kids, try Matt de la Peña’s picture book, Last Stop on Market Street, about a boy who travels across the city to a soup kitchen with his grandmother. Your group could meet to make sandwiches for a local shelter or pantry.
- To think about poverty and homelessness from an empathetic point of view instead of through statistics and facts, read Katherine Applegate’s new novel, Crenshaw, an affecting tale about a family facing eviction and the prospect of living in their minivan.
- Read Who Was Mother Theresa?, Can We Help?: Kids Volunteering to Help Their Communities, or The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. Follow-up with a meeting to brainstorm actions the children could take to care for our planet or to help the sick and poor. Visit a nursing home or volunteer at a local organic farm.
- Try Cece Bell’s El Deafo or Sharon Draper’s Out of My Mind, and then do something to help children with disabilities. For instance, your kids might throw a bake sale to raise money for an organization like Extreme Kids & Crew, a community center in Brooklyn that provides services to families with children with disabilities and autism.
- To get even more creative, there are many riveting books that would lend themselves to service projects on an array of topics from animal rights to clean water to refugee issues to education to mental illness to race: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, or Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.
Let me know on Twitter @MaureenLangloss how your little ones enjoy their books and service projects. Perhaps they will learn what the main character CJ does at the end of Last Stop on Market Street:
CJ looked around as he stepped off the bus.
Crumbling sidewalks and broken-down doors,
graffiti-tagged windows and boarded-up stores.
He reached for his Nana’s hand.
‘How come it’s always so dirty over here?’
She smiled and pointed to the sky.
‘Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ,
you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.’
CJ saw the perfect rainbow arcing over their soup kitchen.
