Author: Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Illustrator: Jane Dyer

November brings many things home-baked; November also brings a time of reflection, a time for expressing gratitude and remembrances of all of the little moments throughout the year that mattered the most.

November is also the perfect time to enjoy Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal with your family. It is a children’s book of virtues filled with many lessons in moral development. It brings meaning and wise insight to positive moral attributes and personality traits. Concepts that may seem hard for youngsters to comprehend are grasped because the author centers them around a favorite pastime: baking cookies. What child doesn’t enjoy baking or eating freshly baked cookies?

Using cookies as her motivating subject, Krouse Rosenthal is able to depict examples of character traits. Although the vocabulary may be beyond the level of most children, they are able to grasp the meaning through the relative subject and the illustrations. For example: the story begins with, “COOPERATE means, How about you add the chips while I stir?” accompanied by and illustration of a bunny and a puppy adding chocolate chips to the cookie batter, while the child is stirring it into the mixture. This clearly exemplifies working together! Another page says, “GENEROUS means offering some to others. Please take one. You, too. Anyone else want a cookie?” As a whimsically dressed kitted is passing out cookies from a basket.

Jane Dyer, the illustrator of this story, helps bring the text to life with watercolored pictures of a variety of animals all clothed in old fashioned attire, interacting with children from multi-cultured backgrounds. Her illustrations illuminate the text beautifully and reinforce each introduced vocabulary word.

As you journey down your own path of gratitude this November, and reflect on all of those qualities associated with “home sweet home,” I invite you to take advantage of the wonderful lessons in moral development that this book has to offer. Happy Thanksgiving!