How a Children's Book Can Build Empathy and Understanding

            In this Council Chronicle article, teacher/author Priten Soundar-Shah says she reads the same children’s picturebook, Fish Is Fish by Leo Lionni, to every class she teaches – middle school, summer camp, college, adult learners. She reads the book with sing-song expression, holding up the illustrations page by page. “Some people look at me like I’ve completely lost my mind,” she says. “But some are intrigued. They want to know where I’m going with this.” 

            Here’s the book’s story. A minnow and tadpole become best friends. The tadpole grows into a frog and leaves the pond to explore the world. When he returns, he tells the minnow about the amazing things he’s seen – birds, cows, people. But his friend can only imagine these unknown things as fish-shaped versions. Birds are fish with wings, cows are fish with udders, people are fish walking upright. “The fish’s imagination is constrained entirely by what it already knows,” says Soundar-Shah. “It imagines these things, but it’s limited by its own experiences. So, it imagines things that are slightly incorrect.”

            The frog’s perception is also distorted. “He’s excited,” says Soundar-Shah. “He genuinely wants to communicate. And yet, because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, because he has his own lived experiences that he’s drawing from, he can’t even conceptualize what might not make sense to the fish. He doesn’t know what the gaps are.”

            This becomes a theme as Soundar-Shah and her students explore new material. “We’re going to read something,” she says. “Our intuition might be to immediately disagree. But remember, we might be fish in this scenario. We really want to listen carefully to make sure we’re understanding the whole context.” When students are inclined to think an idea is completely ridiculous, she asks, “Are we being the frog? Are we being the fish? Have we conveyed things as accurately and clearly as possible to someone who doesn’t have our lived experiences?”

            Fish Is Fish becomes a way to approach difficult conversations. “It’s a reminder that understanding across difference requires both humility about what we might be missing and generosity toward what others are trying to communicate,” says Soundar-Shah. “In a moment when so many of us are struggling with how to hold space for genuine dialogue in our classrooms, a five-minute children’s book might be exactly the kind of disarming, humble starting point we need.” 

 “Why I Teach the Same Picturebook to Every Class I Teach” by Priten Soundar-Shah in Council Chronicle, Spring 2026 (Vol. 35, #3, pp. 27-28)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1148 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.