There’s room for everyone
Book Details
There’s room for everyone
Anahita Teymorian, London: Tiny Owl Publishing, hb, 978 1 9103 2836 1, £12.99, 2018, 36pp.
Picture book, 4-6 years
How to explain the social world we live in to children? Anahita Teymorian takes her young audience on a journey – a metaphorical journey from birth to growing up to become an adult. At each stage there is still room for you – and your family. Indeed, looking around one can see the world is a crowded place full if life not just human beings but animals, birds, fish – and there is still room for all.
So why all the fighting? Surely if there is room for everyone, fighting is unnecessary. It only needs kindness, a bit of love for this to become apparent. This is Teymorian’s message delivered in clear, unpretentious language; language that a child can understand. She then accompanies these words with her very distinctive individual style. This is a message that emanates from a part of the world where it is, perhaps, a most obvious need and Teymorian’s art reflects this and while the text makes no direct reference, the visual clues are all there; the colours of a desert country, the architecture and the night sky. The title brings to mind that Jewish folktale. But the furnishings and the people belong to the world.
A picture book indeed – but not, perhaps, for the very youngest. Rather it is designed for older primary school children and would be an ideal resource for PSHE teachers. Philosophy is once more becoming a subject that is finding a place on the curriculum. Here is a book to help start that thinking journey.
Review by FMH