Cherryleaf Library for Children Podcast
The Cherryleaf Library for Children presents books that could educate children. In our society, we need children’s books that are not simply entertaining and occupying children’s attention, but that educate them in the most profound sense of the word educate: Help them to form their character and identity. The contradictory messages of our society make the formation of character and identity quite problematic – that’s why by their teenage years so many children suffer from mental discomfort, which often turns into actual mental illness. These books do so not through the articulation of abstract principles but through the development of empathy and, especially, sympathy with the suffering of others, clearly distinguishing between good (which is equated with kindness) and evil (equated with cruelty), and helping the child to become a better human being.
Cherryleaf Library for Children Podcast
Without Family: Chapters 18-19
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Liah Greenfeld
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Season 1
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Episode 10
When Rémi wakes up, he learns that Vitalis had frozen to death. He himself remains alive only because Capi shared his warmth with him. He finds himself in the house of Pierre Acquin, a florist, and his family: two boys, Alexis and Benjamin, and two girls, Étienette and Lise, who is mute. The family takes Rémi and Capi in and they live there happily for two years. Then a hailstorm ruins the glass in the greenhouse, and Acquin is in debt to the man he borrowed from to establish his business. He cannot pay and has to enter a debtor's jail. The children go to their uncles and aunts, but none of them is willing or able to take in Rémi, for he is “not family.” With his harp and Capi, he takes to the road again.