Curiosity is a gift—one that children come equipped with—like a little built-in “pilot light.” Grown-ups fortunate enough to spend time with young children have at least two responsibilities when it comes to the flame. The first, of course, is not to extinguish it, and the second (equally obvious) is to fan it so that the gift of curiosity propels children through the language, literacy, and “knowing” demands of the world. Rachel Carson, in her book titled The Sense of Wonder (Harper & Row, 1956), shows us that the grown-up’s job is not so much to label and name the world, as it is to nourish and stretch the child’s natural sense of awe: “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world…”(p. 45).

With the help of the world around them and the best of books, grown-up guides—whether they are parents, childcare providers, or teachers—help children

	Parents can help kids explore their curiosity with books by asking questions and connecting books to the real world.

to form and test concepts, making sense of their world. There are at least three important provisions to make for childhood learning: 1) to recognize and make room for questions; 2) to provide experiences and turn them into talk; and 3) to help children connect with the world of books—names with things, stories with pictures, and questions with both answers and new ponderings.

Children ask the best questions—and adults don’t even have to wait until those questions get tough (such as, “What keeps the clouds up?” or “How high is the sky?”) to recognize, acknowledge, and value the questions of childhood. An 18-month- old asks questions with his finger. He points. “Dis?” he asks, and his mom says, “It’s a filing cabinet.” “Dis?” he asks, and the answer is, “It’s a sea otter.” “Dis?” and “Dis?” and “Dis?” All day, he queries his world. Books are a critically important source to both encourage and talk over children’s questions. Babies, toddlers and preschoolers, too, seek information; they thrive on it—like vitamins. Their questions, not always in question form, fill their days. And receiving (and pondering) the unanswerable questions children ask—is just a beginning. “How big?” they ask. “How fast?” “How high?” And, of course, “Why, why, why?” The tendency is to say, “Not so many questions,” but the better instinct is to say, “I wonder, too. I think I know a way to find out.”

We needn’t take our children to Mount Everest or Timbuktu to fill them with experiences. Instead, we can learn to find the rich experience within the everyday event. For example can learn to look really closely at the sidewalk crack in front of the house—to observe, to listen, to describe, to wonder. These are the deepest experiences. Of course, there are zoos and parks, lakes and sand, music and museums, and paint and clay—all of which can be rich experiences, all of which give wonderful “something’s” for talking over. But when the world is too far, too big, too expensive, too abstract, or too dangerous, there are books capturing experiences and holding them still for us, so we can turn them into talk and understanding.

The best minds can link ideas, images, and experiences to make sense of them. We can help children’s minds perform at their best by helping make connections possible. Finding “alikes” on pages, talking over differences, starting sentences with “I wonder…”; “This reminds me…”; “Did you notice..?”; “Have you ever..?”—all these are the stems of discovery and “connecting” talk. You are the critical variable to bring children’s world into focus, make big ideas manageable, and show little thinkers how big (and profound) their thinking is.

The information books on the list accompanying this webpage are some of the best for encouraging young children’s questions, experiences, and connections. And yet, new books for children are published at a rate of five to six thousand a year. To select the best for individual children, it’s important to know their interests deeply, and then to find a librarian, teacher, or bookstore employee who is knowledgeable and current about books. Curiosity and questions make natural companions with children’s information books. Fan the flames.