Nikolai Popov

Why, is a wordless picture book on the futility of war. The story communicates its message with beautiful pastel images of the countryside populated with gentle looking frogs and mice. Through the pictures you see how a small conflict can lead to devastating consequences. This is the perfect book to use with young students to talk about conflict resolution and how to use is effectively in everyday life. This goes in hand with an issue that is taking place currently; too many actions are taken without anyone really speaking.… (more)

This is a satire, and while I recognize that this is not one of the genre's we studied, it deserves some attention for this book. The book is wordless, but the pages show a frog sitting by himself when a rat surfaces and attacks the frog. More frogs come to his aid, and soon, a war between rats and frogs emerges, exchanging shots for shots and sabotage for sabotage. At the end, it shows the original frog and rat sitting on the destroyed land with their back to each other, the wreckage all around. It is satire because it uses a story to show a political or structural problem. Could be used to discuss the effects of war in class.… (more)