When You Wonder, You're Learning: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids

Bringing the lessons of Mister Rogers into the digital age

Playful and practical, When You Wonder, You're Learning introduces a new generation of families to the lessons of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. By exploring the science behind the iconic television program, the book reveals what Fred Rogers called the "tools for learning" skills and mindsets that scientists now consider essential. These tools--curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and more--have been shown to boost everything from academic learning to children's well-being, and they benefit kids of every background and age. They cost next to nothing to develop, and they hinge on the very things that make life worthwhile: self-acceptance; close, loving relationships; and a deep regard for one's neighbor.

When You Wonder, You're Learning shows parents and educators the many ways they might follow in Rogers' footsteps, sharing his "tools for learning" with digital-age kids. With insights from thinkers, scientists, and teachers--many of whom worked with Rogers himself--the book is an essential exploration into how kids and their parents can excel at what Rogers taught best: being human.

Author: Gregg Behr, Ryan Rydzewski
Publisher: Hachette Go
Published: 04/20/2021
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780306874734

Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 04/30/2021

About the Author
Gregg Behr is a father, children's advocate, and director for the Grable Foundation whose work has drawn comparisons to his hero, Fred Rogers. For more than a decade, he has helped lead Remake Learning--a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers he founded in 2007--to international renown. Formed in Rogers' real-life neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Remake Learning has turned heads everywhere from Forbes to the World Economic Forum for its efforts to ignite children's curiosity, encourage creativity, and foster justice and belonging in schools, libraries, museums, and more. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and also Duke University, Gregg holds honorary degrees from Carlow University and Saint Vincent College. He's an advisor to the Brookings Institution and the Fred Rogers Center, and has been cited by Barack Obama, Richard Branson, and the Disruptor Foundation as an innovator and thought leader. Twitter: @greggbehr

Ryan Rydzewski is a writer whose science and education reporting has garnered several awards and fellowships. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, he taught elementary school in south Louisiana before earning an MFA in nonfiction writing from Chatham University. As a freelancer, his magazine stories focus on everything from schools to space travel to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and his poems and other pieces appear in several journals. A native of Erie, Pennsylvania, Ryan lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Jacqueline. Twitter: @ryanrydzewski