What to Read to Your Kids

Everyone has a story about where they were on 9/11, and if you tell yours, you’ll almost certainly be interrupted by someone eager to share theirs. And yet, for stories so easily accessed—seemingly lying in wait on the tip of our tongue—we go to great lengths to keep them from leaking out into mainstream conversation, or even into the privacy of our own homes, without explicit invitation. This is especially true with our children.

Twenty years have passed, but talking about 9/11 with children—especially young children—continues to makes many parents and teachers uncomfortable. I cannot begin to appreciate the trauma of those directly impacted by the horrific events of that day, but even those of us physically distanced from the attacks felt a profound terror course through our veins as we attempted to make sense of what we were seeing on our television screens, as we scrambled to contact loved ones in New York or Washington DC, as we passed subsequent days under eerily silent skies. It was a fear unprecedented for many of us, and it represented a before-and-after moment we can never un-see. Many of us would rather avoid the topic altogether, or gloss over the horrifying details, than pass along that fear to our children.

And yet, our children have spent their entire lives in a post-9/11 world—in the “after,” so to speak. The safety precautions that started in its wake are the only ones our kids have ever known. I let my ten-year-old daughter read Alan Gratz’s Ground Zero (discussed below) earlier this year after she begged, and I waited for her to set it down, to tell me it was too scary, that she never wanted to take an elevator or get on a plane again. But that didn’t happen. She absorbed the horrors in those pages as she had those in The War That Saved My Life, a gorgeous but also heavy novel about World War Two. I might say she hungered for it.

I’ve come to see that my children want us to talk about that day. They want to understand what led to our longest war in history, the tragic aftermath of which is playing out right now. They want to understand the terror we felt. They want, as I do each time I visit my mom in Manhattan, to stand in front of the reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial and marvel at the names, to contemplate the absence that the rushing water dies into.

I’ve come to see the value in unburdening this history—both for them and for us. We don’t know exactly where 9/11 will land in history, but we do know that our democracy was attacked that day, that our power structures were undermined, and that we were forced to take stock of the values we hold most dear. The events of that day are not only part of our cultural consciousness, they’re a reminder that we must work every day to uphold the freedom that paves the way for a more just and equitable world. (I had my own 9/11 reckoning earlier this year, when I listened to the astounding audio production of Garrett M. Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky.)

I’ve come to see the value that good, careful literature offers in imparting this history—and in pointing us towards hope. In the face of egregious violence and horror and loss on 9/11, there were countless narratives of resilience. Of coming together. Of helping and sacrificing and supporting. Of courage in the most unlikely places. As author Jewell Parker Rhodes recently said on a Little Brown panel, “Narrative takes pain and chaos and helps us make sense of it in a way that allows us to move toward healing.”

Children’s books have a universally honored obligation to end with hope, no matter the subject. It’s what makes them so sacred. The books I discuss below—some a few years old and some published to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of 9/11—take the trauma of that day and transform it into history with grace and beauty. There’s an immensely moving and uplifting picture book that allows the smallest child to connect with the absence and loss surrounding 9/11—I would not hesitate to read it to a four year old, nor to any age for that matter—and there are chapter books that approach the subject from various angles (and with various levels of violence). There’s an outstanding graphic novel that manages a comprehensive study of the subject in just over 100 pages. As always, I provide age ranges below each title.