YOUNG PHILOSOPHERS SERIES
The Young Philosophers Series is dedicated to listening to and valuing children as natural philosophers.
The Book With No Story by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
The Book With No Story is a surprisingly quirky creative writing resource for children with wild imaginations. It is filled with 52 creatures who have run away from the author because they got bored with her stories. The visual art creature profiles are accompanied by some of the creatures’ philosophical thoughts, weaving in and out of their outer worlds and inner emotional landscapes. They are desperate for original thinkers to write them into new inside-out stories. Children can also create their own creatures and stories using the prompts included at the end of the book.
The Book With No Story is a celebration of diversity of thought which leads to questions around what would happen if we all thought the same? Are we alike or are we different? Do people’s needs differ? Is this good or bad or just what is? How often do we find a space and time to just wonder, wonder, wonder and think? Do we think too much? How do we not think? Do we believe everything that we think?
The Fake Dictionary by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
The Fake Dictionary challenges 9 to 12-year-olds to create a series of images of new meanings to everyday words. As the title implies, this is a very original dictionary that becomes a riddle in and of itself. Using family relics, Clare-Rose created a part text and part image book to explore the meanings behind the meanings of words, hoping to open up conversations around the concept of change.
Someone, somewhere, somehow made up a particular word to be meaningful and useful. And so to question — what are the rules around who gets to make up words and why? Who can break the rules? How can the use of particular words twist and change meanings depending on how they're worded? The implications are enormous and the wonder of the kitchen table is a great place to riddle over the complexities of them.
COMING SOON
The One Thing & Anothers by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
Perhaps the most quirky philosophical book of all, The One Thing & Anothers tells the story of two aliens, Rio and Huxley, who live on the Planet of Stuff where everyone loves stuff. Everyone except them. They are bored of living in their castle and swimming in their 17 swimming pools. To amuse themselves, they pull pranks but when caught, their punishment is getting locked in a tower of stuff. Trying to escape the boredom, they hitch a ride on a UFO where they find the planet Earthia. It is so beautiful and so perfect, but to them, so boring. When Huxley decides to pull one of his naughtiest pranks yet, what happens next is something they never would have expected.
The One Thing & Anothers asks the questions, where DID humans come from? Why are we so contradictory in our nature? Why do we want to collect stuff? What does it mean to belong and can we feel like we belong in multiple places across time and space? Why are we destroying the planet we live on? Young bright minds are called on to write the next chapter in the story.
