Love With Work Boots On

So today I'm thinking about kindness because I'm helping to judge an essay contest on that very topic. With pictures from an impromptu relief collection a few years back, I made this collage using a quote that I liked from one of those essays.

The source of the quote seems to be The House Bunny movie.

When you focus on kindness, guess what you notice more of? 

Like the law of attraction, kindness must have a magnetic force field,

 because look what showed up in my box at school yesterday:

My friend Ann was shopping at the Dollar Store when she found these Pledge Cards. I am so touched that she took her kind thought {that I'd like these} 

a step further and actually picked them up for me.

Then, my friend JaneAnn designed these for us to use

during the gratitude part of my keynote at the end of the month.

How fun is that?

And if that weren't enough happiness, I got this beautiful book that's 

rooted in kindness from my friend Trudy.

And now you might be thinking what I was:

Gifts from a friend, yes, but from the enemy?

Based on the real-life story of Holocaust survivor Alter Wiener, this masterpiece chronicles the torturous Nazi Germany life of a young boy and the way he was fed, body and soul as it would turn out, by the kindness of one of the very people who were holding him hostage. From the book: 

Why, I asked myself, would this stranger be willing to risk her life not once but 30 times for me? Why me? Did she have a son my age and feel sorry for me? Was she a religious person who believed it was her duty to help the helpless? 

To this day, I don't know her reason for feeding me. What I do know if that she gave me the energy and hope to survive.

Not only does she feed him a sandwich, but this stranger feeds him hope. Yes, kindness IS love with work boots on.

Trudy Ludwig has truly given us, her readers, a gift by retelling this tale, brilliantly illustrated by Craig Orback. Its poetic language takes us back to a tumultuous time and deals with a sensitive subject in a profoundly healing way. 

Gifts from the Enemy is, without question, a must for your shelves.  

Find four pages of reflection questions and activity suggestions at the back of the book. Click {here} for additional enrichment resources. Read what Two Writing Teachers and Children's Books Heal posts have to say about this gem.

Need more ideas for your kindness crusade?

Click {here} for a teen-inspired TRUCE (tolerance, respect, understanding, compassion, empathy) idea.

Click {here} to visit the Ripple Kindness Project.

Meet the Mutts at Critterkin {here}.

Write a game-changing grant at the Character Lab {here}. 

Sign up for the Great Kindness Challenge {here}.

Click {here} to take a KindSpring 21-day kindness challenge.

Now, go find those work boots!