How does this issue impact YOU and the people you care about?
STEP 1: 5 MINUTES
Get Curious: Pick A Story
Which stories and videos make you interested in learning more about this issue?
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Let's explore
Animal Rights
Climate Change - The way Earth’s weather patterns change over many years.
Ecosystem - A network of living things and their environment that rely on each other to stay in harmony.
Endangered - types of animals or plants at risk of going completely extinct.
Extinct - Entire species who are gone forever, with no way to repopulate with new babies.
Habitat - A place where animals and plants have the right food, water, and space they need to live.
Species - Groups of animals and plants, like polar bears or tomatoes.
Speciesism - an idea that humans are more important than living creatures, so it's okay to be unkind to our animal and plant relations.
SMASH THE KYRIARCHY
Why Act Now?
As humans cut down forests and pollute our oceans, animals around the world are losing food sources and safe spaces to raise young.
As we lose more animal species, all our ecosystems get thrown out of whack. Over 50 wild animals will go extinct within our lifetime - but we can protect them if we take action now.
Animal Rights Toolkit For Kids
Dismantling speciesism and protecting animal habitats
Ages 5+
Kids Take Action Against Ocean Plastic
Content warning for harm against animals due to pollution, animal bones
More Kid-Approved Favorites
Kids Books About Animal Rights
STEP 2: 10 MINUTES
Ask Questions
Talk about this topic with an adult who you trust to be honest with you..
Do...
Do you know any animals personally?
Do you see these animals as pets, family, food, or something else?
How do you engage with these animals? Do you play together, help each other, or keep each other safe?
How...
How do you feel about the way your family treats animals?
Do you feel responsible for keeping animals safe and comfortable?
Which animals deserve safety and comfort? Which don't?
Why?
What...
In what ways do humans harm animals?
Is this harm always necessary?
How can you help animals - either through direct care, or indirectly (like protecting their habitats)?
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STEP 3: USE WHAT YOU HAVE
Get Creative
Flex your brain using what you've learned & discover what's within your control to change.
Pre-K+
How Pets See Your Home
Human perception is not the one and only way to experience the world!
HomeAdvisor trawled through scientific research to show how your pets might see your surroundings at home.
Pre-K+
Build a Backyard Wildlife Habitat
Find 5 DIY wildlife habitats your family can build for your own backyard, courtesy of Jill Staake of 'Let It Grow.'
Pre-K THROUGH MIDDLE SCHOOL
Advocate Against Cruelty In Pet Stores
For pre-writers, emerging, and advanced writers, find letter templates to help kids raise their voice against cruel and inhumane treatment of animals in pet stores.
Elementary+
Join Bumble Bee Watch
Tracking animal sightings through seasons and climate change gives policy-makers the information they need to protect animal habitats. Becoming a citizen scientist can be as simple as noticing the bumblebees in your neighborhood.
Elementary+
Respect Wildlife Activities
Learn how to protect wildlife and dismantle cruelty in the pet industry with the World Animal Protection's activity workbook.
RAISING LUMINARIES
Raising Luminaries creates workshops, training, and educational resources for parents & caregivers igniting the next generation of kind & courageous leaders.
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IT'S STILL OKAY TO LAUGH
Hard conversations with humor & joy
Every month the Luminary Braintrust tackles a new member challenge to make talking about social justice easier in real life.
STEP 4: ASSESS YOUR CAPACITY
Step Into Your Power: Take Action
Whether it's time, money, or our voice - we all have something to contribute.
if you have 1 minute
Tell Congress: Protect Endangered Species!
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) protects threatened wildlife. Since the 1970's, the bill has protected iconic species and brought many back from the brink of extinction.
It's time for Congress to make the extinction crisis a priority. We need them to strengthen and fully fund implementation of the Endangered Species Act.
DIG DEEPER
Bonus Resources
Share what worked for your family (and what didn't).
Add the resources you suggest in the comments below to help families like yours.
VIDEO
Who Deserves Rights & Personhood?
"Why granting lakes and rivers 'personhood"'-- giving them the same legal rights as humans -- is the first step to protecting our bodies of water and fundamentally transforming how we value this vital resource."
via Kelsey Leonard
Activity Guide
Citizen Science For Kids
Learn how kids ages 8 and up can participate in citizen science projects to protect animals & habitats.
via National Geographic
ACTION
World Animal Protection
From shutting down the Miami Seaquarium to ending cruelty at Petco, follow the World Animal Protection for more quick actions to make a difference today.
Reading Guide
What Do Animals Teach Us?
Kid-approved bedtime stories with lessons our animal relations have shared with us.
Stay Curious, Stand Brave & Smash The Kyriarchy
Raising Luminaries reduces the workload on overworked caregivers
igniting the next generation of kind & courageous leaders
Ashia (they/them or she/her)
Raising Luminaries is founded & run by me, Ashia Ray – an Autistic, multiracial (Chinese/Irish) 2nd-generation settler raising two children alongside my partner on the homelands of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people. I support families and educators in raising the next generation of kind & courageous leaders, so we can all smash the kyriarchy together.
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Help me keep these resources free & accessible for all
RAISING LUMINARIES
Raising Luminaries creates workshops, training, and educational resources for parents & caregivers igniting the next generation of kind & courageous leaders.
ABOUT | MISSION | FINANCIALS | ACCOUNTABILITY
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STAY IN TOUCH
Get free weekly email notifications with toolkits, guides & little delights
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Photographs via Unsplash & Illustrations via Storyset, used with permission.
7 comments
Book review: Meatless?: A Fresh Look At What You Eat, by Sarah Elton, Julie McLaughlin (Illustrator)
Pros:
Definitely seeking to be inclusive and non-judgmental
History of vegetarianism in different cultures and regions around the world
Gives reasons why some may or may not choose to not eat meat
Gives explanation to how eating meat aided human evolution in early days of hunter gatherers
What eating meat and not eating meat meant/means in different cultures, West and East- e.g. status, moderation
Describes the role of vegetarianism and meat-eating in the major world religions
Animal welfare – doesn’t shirk hard topic of ethics, but doesn’t preach the “right” way to eat
Describes the environmental costs of animal farming
Explains the need to grow food for everyone
Pros and cons to meat agriculture for food security
Meat alternatives for home
Not all families are in a position to not eat any meat
Make room for everyone at table- what you eat is a personal choice and everyone has different reasons
Non-judgmental tone, very straightforward and mostly subjective tone
Emphasizes that choosing to be vegetarian, eat meat, eat less meat, etc. is a choice the reader has
Cons:
Child would need a parent to process and discuss book
Not a picture/story book, but an didactic/information-delivering book – parents and children would need to work together with it
Would need to be condensed/summarized for younger children? I’m not sure what age range I would put this as, since the parents/children would be using it together.
Disclaimer: I myself don’t eat meat and I’m trying to be as non-biased as I can, but I would love if anyone else here would chime in with their opinion on this book. Is it truly non-preachy, or am I perceiving it that way? 🙂
Thank you!
In July 2024, A non-supporting member slid into my DMs to ask
“Why not any of the picture books that are directly about veganism and why we shouldn’t eat animals?”
Here is my response:
“Thanks for asking. I would love to have this as an open conversation in the comments of the newsletter so more folks could join in. Maybe other folks could have had books they could recommend.
Why no books on veganism: I can’t find any books on veganism that aren’t full of bigoted trash. While I’m not against veganism and I’d love to read books about veganism with my kids, every book I could find that was available for kids was preachy, poorly written, and disengaging to the point where it would have turned my kids off on the subject entirely. For the same reason I don’t recommend anti-racism books with good messages and terrible execution, these books need to be kid-approved, otherwise we’re perpetuating an ageist system.
Why we don’t have books about why we ‘shouldn’t’ eat animals: Similarly – I couldn’t find any book about vegetarianism or veganism that wasn’t classist, racist, and steeped in a colonizer mindset. I’m not against promoting a book that outlines the ethics on animal consumption and takes a hard agenda, but the only books that do that A. Didn’t talk about ethics, they just preached about the ‘right’ way to consume (supremacy, racism), and B. Failed to address how families who do consume animals for cultural, financial, and ethical reasons could move toward less animal consumption (erasure, colonialism, classism).
In other words – the books I test and recommend must move us further toward intersectional anti-speciesism, and every book on veganism I could find would instead send families hurtling in the other direction.
If you’d like to contribute toward making this search for a decent book on veganism, I welcome your help.”
The commenter then responds (with a much warmer, less challenging tone), suggesting I should send them a list of all the books I’ve read (?!?) and a meandering book pitch, to which I respond:
“I’ve read all the books in our library network, which usually is vast, but in this case quite limited on stories about veganism and vegetarianism – mostly stuff by Ruby Roth and Stephanie Dreyer. While there are plenty of cookbooks, there isn’t much for story-based books to engage younger kids. Unfortunately with the donor-model of Raising Luminaries, I can’t afford to buy books not available at the library to test them out.
The idea you have for a book sounds lovely. I’m not averse to suggesting books that make families uncomfortable – just ones that weaponize shame and individualism without helping families understand barriers or offer accessible steps to take action.
If you are willing to keep an eye out for new stories as they come out, I’d love it if you would be willing to recommend some in the public comments on the animal rights toolkit so members of our community can see them.”
September ’24 Update: The commenter sends ANOTHER private email, recommending the book ‘Meatless’
My Response:
I read Meatless a while back. I do love that it’s inclusive, non-judgemental, and well written – but it’s not for kids. It’s a didactic book for adults to hand to kids and force them to read it for a book report or something. The only kids who would willingly pick this up on their own are those who are already convinced.
I do appreciate you keeping an eye out for these. Although – I mentioned before, I would really appreciate you making public comments on the toolkit for these sorts of questions and suggestions.
Disabled BIPOC creators having to individually respond to private messages demands a good chunk of labor that we can’t redistribute into our community – without investing our very scarce time and energy to reduce risk. When we get messages from non-supporters whom we don’t know at all, we don’t know what kind of punishment lies in wait for us if we don’t respond with exactly the right tone and level of helpfulness.
Even if I could recommend this book – I have to set aside over an hour to respond to each private book recommendation personally, dig up a non-Amazon link (goodreads is an amazon company), create an image, manually edit the toolkit to add the book, add a credit to the person who emailed me, etc. And all of this is work that I pay to do, unless someone chooses to donate to cover some of my labor, which the vast majority of people who use my toolkits don’t (even folks who use them their own paid work!)*.
All of this goes much faster and is a much more transparent process if you are willing to add your recommendation for this book by title and author, and why you like it, directly in the comments of the toolkit.
Again, I really appreciate your suggestions – but I hope you understand why I’d prefer to answer these in a public forum so I don’t have to individually respond to 20 people with the same message.
Private messages that don’t *really* need to be private place me in a really vulnerable situation where I have to respond in a reasonable time and justify why I do / don’t do the things I do. A public comment at least allows others to learn from this information, and it doesn’t put me in the position of personally having to take on this labor.
I hope you understand. I’m solo-parenting this month and I’ve spent 8 hours on these types of messages this week alone. I’m so tired. It’s not personal, I just really need folks to reciprocate a little, or at least a tiny bit of redistribution of labor.
[end of message]
*Note: This person is a Montessori educator and definitely profits off my unpaid labor.
Thanks for being so transparent in how you handle these types of situations Aisha! You put a lot of thought into all of the ways you manage the community you have built and it can be easy for folks to forget that you are just a single person running all this.
We, as members of this wonderful community, need to make sure that we both respect the boundaries you have set (especially when you have been to clear in defining them https://booksforlittles.com/info/accountability/contact-boundaries/) AND we need to make sure that we are also contributing to the learning and growth of other community members by using the tools like the comments section. I know it can be uncomfortable “speaking” in public place – what if I mess up?! – but that too can be helpful for other folks. It also means that Aisha doesn’t have to carry the work of community building alone.
Thank you for your support, Lena!
In keeping with the RL accountability policy, here’s the full correspondence with the other person’s name and identifying information removed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aeYFLA_x1m5MArnI6ydxSgdmjXqCV9c0ScvBHNalnJI/edit?usp=sharing
Hello Friends
It’s an inspirational day when I am introduced to such a dedicated team. (You make the Earth smile) I have created a website to help draw attention to how we can give love to nature, as she shares love with us. This is especially true for the voiceless (well, they are speaking in their behaviors if we learn to see and listen). I look forward to sharing this with you.
http://climatechangeanimals.com
Lovely poetry, TJ!