When you put “to squish or not to squish” up for a vote amongst kids, the “not” generally wins out. The authors did not write the book just to hear a chorus of “not to squish,” but to open up a dialogue amongst kids and kids and adults.
This morning we came across a conversation between Anna and her mother on the blog, Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns. Three-year-old Anna reasons that since the family eats animals that have been killed, killing ants cannot therefore be wrong.
This is a very well-reasoned argument for a preschooler and a great dialogue between mother and child follows. The mother tries to draw a line between killing for sustenance and killing for fun. This line in the sand of our ethics, though, looks fairly weak to this particular preschooler.
Thanks for writing about us – we really did enjoy the book even though it didn’t go quite as expected in some ways 🙂
And thanks for reading it, discussing it, and sharing it, Natalie! Again the authors are all about the conversation not the answer, so we all LOVED your post.