Product Description
Now more than ever, parents are told how important it is to talk meaningfully to their kids. This is the book that makes it happen. A revised and expanded second edition, The Kids’ Book of Questions, with 634,000 copies in print, makes it easy to ask hard questions and fun to answer them. Questions to challenge, questions to provoke. Questions to entertain and expand young minds. Questions about right or wrong, about fears and hopes, ethics, religious beliefs, about why parents act the way they do–even about ruling the world.
Updated to include questions on subjects that have arisen since the book’s original publication in 1988–from the internet to issues like school violence and terrorism–the book is a sure way to prod young people into discovering who they really are and what they really believe. There are inquiries into values: “If you knew you wouldn’t get caught, would you cheat on a test by copying someone else’s answers?” Intriguing fantasies: “If you could email any famous person and know they’d read and answer your note, who would you write to and what would you say?” Philosophical queries: “Have you had any personal experiences that lead you to believe in God?” Provocative scenarios: “After being given a truth pill, what would you say if you were asked to describe your family?”
Kids, and parents, will be amazed to find how far one little question will lead.
20 Jul
8:47 am on July 20th, 2010
We took this book on a long car trip two years ago when my kids were 10 and 12. We spent hours talking and laughing about the questions and our answers. The book asks many humorous questions such as “If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?”, or “What was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you? Are you embarrassed now by the same things that used to embarrass you?”. But mostly, the book asks insightful and thought-provoking questions such as, “What are you most proud of having done? What would make you even more proud?”, or “Some adults have a lot of trouble enjoying themselves. If you were asked to give them some advice about how to play and have more fun, what would you say?”, or “Do you think boys or girls have it easier?”. This book has been in our car for 2 years. The kids still pick it up frequently to ask questions to their carpool on the way to school, or to ask questions to their friends on the way to sports practices. And they especially love to hear their parents’ answers!
Rating: 5 / 5
11:47 am on July 20th, 2010
This book is a wonderful resource for classroom teachers. It prompts real non-biased conversations about choices, ethics, and problem solving surrounding issues such as popularity, telling the truth, money, sports, and much more. When there is time to fill, we pull out a Kids’ Question. (Of course, the questions must be preapproved by the teacher due to the sensitivity of certain topics and content.)
Rating: 5 / 5
12:13 pm on July 20th, 2010
I bought this on impulse for a long car trip, along with other books and toys, but this was the major hit! Our kids (8 and 10) took turns picking numbers and discussing the chosen questions; they kept at it for over an hour and wanted more later. They still wanted to use it on another trip two months later. As parents, we were astonished that they were so interested in talking about serious problems with us and each other as long as it was within the format of the book. Please tell me there’ll be a sequel!
Rating: 5 / 5
1:59 pm on July 20th, 2010
I’ve used this book with my own kids, and I’ve used it in my classroom. It was enjoyed by so many students that I hate to say it, but one student walked off with it at the end of the year. I work in a school where a lot of the kids are at risk, and this book was wonderful as a tool to help them examin their attitudes, their fears, and their feelings about things. It takes a little time to look through and evaluate what would be good for your classroom. That’s a subjective thing anyway, and you have to know your students, but over all, I find this book to be worthwhile and fun at the same time.
Rating: 5 / 5
4:53 pm on July 20th, 2010
I will let you choose if the following questions are inappropriate or not. (quoted from the book)
1) If you became so ill that you would die if you did not stay hooked up to a large life support machine for the rest of your life, would you want someone to pull the plug?
2) Are you afraid there will be a nuclear war? If so, do you have any ideas about how to keep it from happening?
3) Imagine you got hit by a car and could be saved ONLY by a special operation. The operation would give you a normal, happy life, but would unfortunately cause you fifteen minutes of terrible, stabbing pain every morning when you awoke. Would you want to have the operation?
I quoted all of these questions word for word. In the last question do you not see that there is no alternative. The kid chooses life with 15 minutes of pain every morning or chooses to die?
I gave this book one star because I feel some of the questions are inappropriate for a ‘kids’ book and should have been left out. Furthermore, the other questions seem to lack a spark of imagination, creativity, or fantasy behind them.
This book may help you communicate with children, but you have to take into consideration their age group, maturity, and then be selective about which questions are appropriate for them.
Rating: 1 / 5