Love Grows Love by Lauren Grabois Fischer

Empathy is at the heart of what it means to be human. It’s a foundation for acting ethically, for good relationships of many kinds, for loving well, and for professional success. And it’s key to preventing bullying and many other forms of cruelty.

-5 Tips for Cultivating Empathy, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Empathy is the ability to be aware of and sensitive to another person's thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  It's the ability to put yourself in their shoes and is the foundation for kindness, tolerance, and compassion.  It's also an emotional skill that needs to be taught.  

One of the ways teachers and parents can help children learn empathy is through reading and discussing empathetic children's literature.  Reading Love Grows Love by Lauren Grabois Fischer is a good book to use when starting that discussion.  In Love Grows Love, we see children... and flowers... experiencing different emotions.  Their faces clearly depict how they are feeling.  Children will be able to look at the illustrations, identify how each child and flower are feeling, and see a cause and effect relationship between the children's emotions and the flowers'.  Keep reading to learn more about Love Grows Love and how you can use it in your classroom!

If you are looking for the directions to making seed paper, they have been moved to the blog post How to Make Seed Paper Hearts.  Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.

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Author Summary

Love Grows Love is a deep and inspiring children’s book that will simplify how to discuss emotions, energy, feelings, and positivity. This book has created a buzz as it teaches empathy and energy in a beautiful and simplistic way. Children are feeling the emotions of the children in the illustrations and discussing them with their parents. It is important that we remember as parents, the messages that we provide to our children at a young age will create their futures. Our children deserve to grow up confident and empowered, spiritually aware, and comfortable in who they are.

🍎 Title: Love Grows Love
🍎 Author: Lauren Grabois Fischer
🍎 Illustrator: Devin Hunt
🍎 Publisher: The Be Books
🍎 Date: May 3, 2017
🍎 Pages: 34

Reading Love Grows Love

Love Grows Love is a deceivingly simple story with only three words on the page.  At first glance, you might think that Love Grows Love is a book intended for beginning readers, but that's not the case.  This is a book for all ages to read.  

The power of Love Grows Love lies within its message... 'what we extend to others, others give us in return.'  Lauren Grabois Fischer uses flowers and gardening as metaphors to emphasize this message.  On each double-page spread, we see a child watering flowers.  These flowers reflect the emotions the child is feeling.  For example, the sad child is growing sad flowers and the laughing child is growing laughing flowers.  The message of Love Grows Love is clear... if we sow love in others, we will receive love... if we sow anger, we will receive anger. It's a clear cause-and-effect relationship your students will quickly recognize.  Simple?  Yes.  Simplistic?  No.  You can easily spend a lengthy amount of time discussing emotions, empathy, cause and effect, metaphors, and illustrations with your students.

Learn more about Love Grows Love and The Be Books series:

https://www.thebebooks.com/

(Next Article: When We Stayed Home by Tara Fass and Judith A. Proffer)