Diploma in Children’s Picture books& Mental health.
“ I wondered if Dante and I would ever be allowed to write our names in the map of the world. Other people are given writing instruments - and when they go to school, they are taught to use them. But they don’t give boys like me and Dante pencils or pens or spray paint. They want us to read, but they do not want us to write. What will we write our names with? And where on the map would we write them ?”
Aristotle and Dante dive into the waters of the world
Benjamin Alire Saenz
Maps are known to have saved lives of those who are lost or at the precipice of losing themselves. Maps are like guides you don’t have to follow them like a strict rule ‘ follow me or you will be lost forever’ kind but more like ‘ let’s see where all we can go and what all we can discover’ or ‘lets find where home is’. Michael White the co-founder of Narrative practices and author of the book ‘Maps of Narrative Practices’ writes maps help people become curious about aspects of their lives that have been forsaken, fascinated with neglected territories of their identities and at times, awed by their own responses to the predicaments of their existence. This makes us wonder, how do we understand identity ? If maps are what we use to navigate life ? What are we made of ?
Maybe we are made of universes filled with galaxies made of story stars. Or may be we are like landscapes filled with snow peaked mountains, gushing rivers, forests filled with century old red oak trees, beings unimagined and creatures to be discovered. Each being a story.
Are we made of story-dust ? What becomes possible if we undertstand ourselves through stories ? Stories that we are told and those we tell ourselves. To navigate through our story lands, we need maps or learn the skill of map-making.
Children’s picture books are like maps, maps to islands of safety in tough times. They hold meanings that scaffold lives imagined but not thought about before. Children’s picture books carry wisdom and know-hows that could help us navigate treacherous times with utmost gentleness and creative tricks. They offer soft spaces for hard conversations and warms hugs on lonely nights.
The hope of The Diploma in Children’s Picture Books and Mental Health is to learn the skill of reading maps, make maps and navigate communities and people’s story lands using maps hidden in form of children’s picture books.
