Gladys Hunt on Developing a Sympathetic Heart

Editor’s Note: This month’s Honey for a Child’s Heart Read-Along looks at Chapter 23, “Nourishing Your Child’s Spiritual Life.” This must include a sympathetic heart . . .

Understanding Others

Originally published at the Tumblon Website, August 26, 2009

While I was reading Graham Scharf’s insightful blog* about helping children understand another person’s point of view, I immediately thought of the role of literature in teaching readers how the world looks to others—not just with facts, but with the heart.

Good stories are good teachers. How do you best learn, for example, what is means to be unselfish or kind or gentle? Those are abstract words. But if I see those words demonstrated by the actions of characters in a story, then I begin to understand. When someone mis-treats my favorite character in the story, I know this is not right. I sense the unfairness of this. It dawns on me that this is what it looks like to be selfish—and it is ugly.

The remarks of a small girl in a letter she wrote to Laura Ingalls Wilder illustrate the point. She wrote, “O Laura, if I was you I would have kicked Nellie Oleson in the leg when she was mean to you!” She saw what meanness looked like in a story. Of course, if Laura Ingalls Wilder were still alive she might have written back to her to point out that kicking Nellie was not the way to solve the problem. But at least this child recognized injustice when she saw it. Meanness is ugly.

Stories are about someone else. They are “out there” and I am only the observer. There is no need to defend myself as I might if I were accused of being selfish. I see it for what it is.

How else will a child learn what it means to be noble or brave or courteous? These are words hard to define. That’s why young boys feel braver when they read Call it Courage (Armstrong Sperry). They see what it looks like. Older children who read Tolkien’s Trilogy say that reading these books has taught them what it means to be noble or valiant.

I’d like every family to read aloud Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (at the appropriate age—it’s in the 8^th grade reading curriculum, but a younger child can understand it if read aloud) to begin to understand what injustice prejudice brings—and older children to read its prequel, The Land. It helps you understand how others feel.   

Reading The Hundred Dresses (Eleanor Estes) touched my niece’s heart. She had no previous understanding of why a little girl might wear a worn-out dress with many patches on it. I could go on and on—stories of handicapped children, stories of bullies picking on vulnerable others, stories that give insight into why some people are cruel. It’s the working out of the good-versus-evil plotting that is part of good stories—and which is the story of the universe. Stories help us see the importance of choices in the way we act.

Also at Redeemed Reader

Reflection: Read Betsy’s thoughts on the Logan Family saga (beginning with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry) and The Legacy of Mildred Taylor.

*Note from Mark Hunt: This blog was titled “How do parents see and communicate their vision?” and was published August 3, 2009 on Tumblon. This blog is no longer active but the article can be accessed if desired through the Internet Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20090901000000*/tumblon.com. Click on the August 3 date to access.

© Gladys M. Hunt 2008-10, reissued in 2022 with minor adjustments with permission of the Executor of the Literary Estate of Gladys M. Hunt (4194 Hilton SE, Lowell, MI 49331). Used by permission. All rights reserved.