Small Places Close to Home: A Children’s Declaration of Rights
Written by Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrated by Kate Gardiner
Balzer + Bray, 2023, 40 pp (unpaged)
ISBN: 978-0063092587
“In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.” (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1958)
Small Places Close to Home: A Children’s Declaration of Rights opens with a “Before You Begin” section. In it, author Deborah Hopkinson provides historical background regarding Eleanor Roosevelt’s campaign to spread the idea of basic human rights for all people in all nations. Coming on the heels of World War II, Roosevelt’s commitment to this idea was timely and heartfelt. On December 10, 1948, she succeeded when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations. Small Places Close to Home was written to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Declaration.
The brief lyrical print in the book is divided into three sections: Me; My School and Community; and My Country and World. In the “Me” section, Deborah Hopkinson begins with children’s understanding of their place within biological and chosen families as well as the larger global family. Children around the world have the right to freedom, equality, safety, and the expression of their culture as well as their private thoughts. This section concludes with the responsibility to respect the bodies of others and “act toward them with gentleness and goodwill.”
In the “My School and Community” section, Hopkinson spotlights the right to learn and get an education. She revisits the idea of safety inside the home as well as throughout the community. The author stresses the obligation to speak kind words and “act toward others with an open, generous heart.”
In the “My Country and World” section, Hopkinson opens with the right to be free from persecution and to gather with others to protest and use one’s voice to create change. In addition to the right to live in peace for all people as well as the plants, animals, and the planet, the author includes the right to dream of a better world. This section ends with the declaration that these rights are children’s individual and collective rights shared by others “in this vast, wide world, and in small places, close to home.”
The book’s back matter provides a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt and information about the adoption of the Declaration. The resources provided focus on Roosevelt’s life and work.
Kate Gardiner’s double-page spreads in gouache and pencil are imbued with variation in terms of race, ethnicity, heritage language, and culture. Her artwork gently reinforces the text. She uses red and yellow accents to add interest and emphasis on each page. Every illustration captures the diversity of global communities.
This book can be paired with For Every Child: The Rights of the Child in Words and Pictures, text adapted by Caroline Castle (2001) with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu. This book is illustrated by fourteen children’s illustrators including John Burningham, Shirley Hughes, and Jerry Pinkney. Both books make a case for a global society that actualizes more caring, compassion, and protection for the world’s young people.
When including these books in a text set, educators can capitalize on the need for protest and activism when people, politicians, and governments do not live up to the rights of children as documented in these books. What Can a Citizen Do? by Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris (2018) and any and all of the books listed in the WOW Dozen: A Dozen Books on Activism collected by Deanna Day-Wiff to provide ways for youth to take action.
Educators may also want to access the full text of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which was adopted in 1989. It is included in the backmatter of For Every Child and is available online.
Deborah Hopkinson is an award-winning author of over seventy books for young people. She writes in multiple genres from picturebook biographies to middle grade historical fiction. Readers can visit her website to learn more.
Illustrator Kate Gardiner is a member of the Chaubunagungamang band of the Nipmuck Indians. She also has Polish roots. Small Places is her debut picturebook and reflects her strong connection to the natural world. Her illustrations will appear in three forthcoming titles in 2024 and 2025. Visit her website to learn more.
Judi Moreillon, Tucson, AZ
© 2024 by Judi Moreillon
WOW Review, Volume XVI, Issue 3 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on work by Judi Moreillon at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/review/xvi-3/11/
WOW review: reading across cultures
ISSN 2577-0527