Using Literature to Build Jewish Values in Your Children
Let's go "Beyond the Book" with Red, Blue and Yellow Yarn.
Ages 3-6
This is a story that opens up the intergenerational gap for examination. Generation gaps occur when children grow up without the understanding that their parents, aunts, uncles, and the old people in the nursing homes were once children too.
True, the "times" were different, but there is a sameness to childhood that transcends the centuries. Children may feel lonely, or misunderstood, or not important, or even unloved and deprived. On the other hand, they may have positive memories of family picnics or vacations, of new babies, and weddings!
"Red, Blue and Yellow Yarn" is a story of a grandmother who identifies with her grandchild's mischief. The child plays with balls of yarn like real balls, tossing them , and tangling them into an impossible maze. And without anger, his grandmother comes to his rescue. She helps him untangle the yarn, while she shares her childhood story, which is very similar to his.
Through this sharing, grandmother and grandchild become more closely bonded. She was once a little girl "in trouble" too, and HER grandmother came to her rescue, also. . It is one thing for a child to have an adult help him correct the wrong he did - but to do it without rebuke reflects quite a higher level of empathy between adult and child.
Unconditional love is a familiar term in our culture, and somewhere imbedded in that love has to be unconditional forgiveness.. The memory of that piece in us that remembers ourselves as children, with an adult on our side is what Red, Blue and Yellow Yarn is all about. Share that memory with that little person next to you, and narrow that generation gap.
Buy the book!
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