After the Fall

Title:  After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again

Author/Illustrator: Dan Santat
Publisher Roaring Brook Press © 2017
ISBN:  978-1-62672-682-6
Grade Level:  K-5
Book Review: Have you even considered what happened to Humpty Dumpty after the fall?  We know that our past experiences shape our beliefs and in this story Dan Santat provides rich food for thought about just how impactful the fall was to Humpty Dumpty. Santat teaches a powerful lesson about resilience as we learn that even though Humpty Dumpty took a fall, he also got back up.
Systems Thinking Connections:
Habits:  No doubt, students with any familiarity with the Habits of a Systems Thinker could generate a substantive list of the Habits that Humpty uses in this story.  He definitely changes his perspective, practices successive approximation, and he finds leverage to help his problem.
Tools: Humpty Dumpty takes actions that help him accumulate courage to try find a way to get back up. Build a stock-flow diagram with students and then ask questions to help them identify the leverage that helps Humpty move from being a broken egg to being a systems thinker.

I am a boy of color

Title:  I am a boy of color

Author:  Deanna Singh
Illustrator:  Ammar Nsoroma
Publisher:  Orange Hat Publishing © 2016
ISBN:  978-1-943331-21-5
Grade Level: PreK-adult
Book Review: Passionately committed to changing the image of boys of color in modern society, Deanna Singh created a picture book designed to celebrate the best qualities and reinforce the positive characteristics found in children.  The book begins with a boy looking in the mirror and transitions to positive affirmations of what he can see.  Each quality and characteristic carefully selected to create a portrait that brings deserved honor to boys of color.


Systems Thinking Connections

Habits:  While the text does not reference the tern leverage specifically, Deanna Singh used her understanding a system structure and identified the creation of a children's book as a leverage action. This book filled with positive messages, read to multitudes of children, multitudes of times will affect mental models. Impacting mental models is the greatest way to bring about significant change, affecting current reality and the future. Another explicit purpose of this text is for boys of color to make personal connections, being able to see themselves in this powerful piece of children's literature.
Tools:  Teachers using this book with young children and early readers could take any of the positive characteristics or qualities -- possibility, joy, pride, caring --  and look at those through the lens of a stock-flow map. Building  multiple stock-flow maps could lead to discovering the connections and interdependencies between these qualities.