A great way to get kids thinking about safe cycling is to read children's books aloud to them. I've done this in bike clubs after school and in PE classes. The younger kids, especially, enjoy this. One book per class can bring lots of safe cycling topics into your teaching.
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Robot on a bike!
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There are scores of bicycle books available to teach younger
children safe cycling messages. Your
school library will have many of them.
By the time you get to 4th and 5th graders, there
are fewer books available. But most
older elementary school children have the opportunity to read aloud to younger
children. This gives you one of the
first opportunities to have children mentoring children by talking about the safe
cycling behavior described in the examples presented below.
Below is a list of 14
bicycle story books for k – 3rd graders. The safety messages in those books are
pointed out under “Lesson” after each book description. You can probably pick up any children’s
bicycle book and apply safety lessons yourself once you have read through a few
of these books.
Key messages include:
perform an ABC Quick Check on your bike; learning to ride takes
practice, persistence, and patience; bicycling knows no age or gender barriers;
control your speed; watch for hazards; wear a helmet; follow the rules and the
law; bicycling is fun; bicycling allows you to explore; bikes can be fixed over
and over; you can learn how to fix a bike
(visit your Bike Co-op to learn); etc.
Franklin rides a Bike by Paulette Bourgeois and Brenda Clark (Scholastic Inc., 1997) Also available on DVD and in Spanish: Franklin Monta en Bicicleta
Part of the popular Franklin the
turtle series, Franklin is faced with a common dilemma of not being able to
ride a bike without training wheels.
Franklin’s friends ride but he can’t.
He gets frustrated and learns about persistence, patience and practice
as he finally takes his training wheels off and learns to balance.
Lessons:
That learning anything takes effort; magic doesn’t help;
persistence, patience and practice is the best solution; Training wheels don’t
help learn to balance; learn a proper
start; learn to balance without pedals; fall to the right – put your right foot
down; fall to the left - . . .
A
Bicycle for Rosaura by Daniel Barbot, illustrated by Morella
Fuenmayor(Harcourt Brace & Co. 1990)
First published in Spanish (also
available in Spanish)
Rosaura, a pet chicken, wants a bicycle for her
birthday. Her owner, Amelia finds a
“special” mechanic to build her one - a fixed gear bicycle with no brakes.
Lessons: Bicycles for special needs; Rosaura’s bike has no brakes, an opportunity
to talk about the need to perform an ABC Quick Check on your bicycle (see ABC
Quick Check) and what the law says about
brakes; Rosaura wears
no helmet so use your stop sign or helmet stickers to make that point with
children.
Froggy
Rides a Bike; by Jonathan London, Illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz
(Puffin Books, 2006) Also available in Spanish: Froggy Monta en Bicicleta.
Froggy dreams of riding and flying on his new bike the day he is
scheduled to go to the bike shop to buy a new bike. He and his father go through the exercise of
picking out the right bike. Froggy
falls, totters, and falls again but finally, through practice learns to ride
his bike.
Lessons: Wear a helmet; learning to balanc; choosing the right kind of bike among all the
sizes, colors and prices; bicycle equipment (bell, horn, talk about lights).
Dora
Rides to Bike Park, by Kara McMahon, Illustrated by Dave Aikins
(Simon and Schuster, 2007) Based on the
TV series, Dora the Explorer.
The little kids like this book a
lot because it has a built in bell you can let them ring. Dora rides to the bike park picking up all
her friends along the way. Sprinkled
with Spanish words, everyone can feel like they are going with Dora.
Lessons: Everone wears a helmet, elbow and knee pads (make the point that if
you don’t fall you may not need all the pads – just the helmet); bicycling is fun
Sally
Jean, the Bicycle Queen, by Cari Best, illustrated by Christine
Davenier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).
The book takes Sally Jean
through several childhood years on bikes: on her mother’s bike seat, a trike, a
bike with training wheels, then learning to ride, and outgrowing her bike so
that the seat and handlebars both needed raising. As Sally Jean outgrew her bike she was faced
with the problem of finding a properly fitting bicycle. And she was faced with the problem of finding
the money to buy one. The solution came
when a friendly junk collector helped find the parts for her to build her own
bike. Sally Jean starts her own Bike
Co-op, teaching friends and neighbors how to fix their own bikes.
Lessons:
Passion, thrill, freedom and independence of learning to ride, to
fix bikes, and to help others do the same.
Girls can do this too (in what is often a male dominated world of bike
mechanics!) The Bike Co-op theme is
strong here, of people helping people discover a passion.
Duck
on a Bike by David Shannon (Scholastic, Inc. 2002).
Flashbacks to Animal Farm, duck
comes up with the great idea to try riding a bike. Success brought envy from all the other
barnyard animals until an entire group of kids comes through to visit. When they park their bikes in the farmyard
all the animals get to try a clandestine ride.
Lessons: Anyone can ride a bike, it just takes
practice. And bike riding is fun! Wear a helmet: when the group of kids come through two of
nine kids don’t wear a helmet. Use your
Stop sign stickers or helmet stickers to enforce the value of wearing a helmet.
The
White Bicycle by Rob Lewis (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988)
Ravi’s mother cleaned out the
garage and convinced him to discard his “rusty and dirty” bicycle. As the story unfolds, Ravi’s bike goes to the
dump where someone rescues it, uses it and abandons it. The bike goes through a number of riders
until it arrives at Joe’s junk shop. Joe
cleans it, fixes it an puts it in his shop for sale. Ravi sees the bike and asks his mom to buy it
for him. She does and Ravi is very happy
since it is “a lot like his old one!”
Lessons:
Used bikes are fun; bikes can
be fixed; everyone can use a bike for transportation; visit the Bike Co-op!
The
Bike Lesson by Stan and Jan Berenstain (Beginner Books, Random
House, 1964)
Part of the immensely successful
and controversial Berenstain series of books about bears. Arrogant (and idiot) Papa bear demonstrates
all the wrong moves on a bike while child bear can’t wait to try out his new
bike. The book is funny, as papa bear
crashes time and again for doing all the wrong things.
Lessons: Nobody wears a helmet; lesson one, how to get
on a bike; lesson two is how to stop;
watch where you are going (and anticipate hazards); watch road signs and watch
for debris on the road; don’t ride through a puddle if you can’t see the bottom
of it (learning about hidden potholes); control your speed going down
hill; know how to brake; pick your route
carefully; keep to the right; riding with no hands; riding two on a bike
(illegal in Colorado). This book has it
all.
Tillie
the Terrible Swede (How One Woman, A Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed
History) by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by Sarah McMenemy (Alfred
A. Knopf, 2011)
This is the story of a bicycling
young woman who fought social norms to ride and race in the 1890s. The story ends with Tillie taking on a new
hobby, driving her automobile. The book
is based on the real historic character, Tillie Anderson, a young Swedish
immigrant working in a tailor shop who first discovered the wonders of the
bicycle and began to race in the 1890s.
Lessons:
An inspiration to young women, this would be good for older
children. The idea is that anyone, not
just men, can ride bicycles and race.
Tillie and her bridegroom marry and exit the church by bike.
Mrs.
Peachtree’s Bicycle by Erica Silverman, illustrated by Ellen Beier
(Simon & Schuster, 1996)
Mrs. Peactree was tired of
walking to do her shopping until one day she saw a trick bicycle rider at the
circus. It struck her that she could
learn to ride a bicycle. In buying a
bike, though, the salesman tried to sell her a tricycle. She insisted on a two-wheeler but then was
frustrated when bicycling didn’t come automatically. “Ladies can’t wheel,” said the milkman, “It
takes too much concentration.” That made
Mrs. Peachtree even more determined to learn to ride a bike. She learned and even got a ticket for going
to fast.
Lesson:
Learning to ride a bicycle isn’t automatic. It takes practice. The idea that women or girls can’t learn to
ride is nonsense. There are rules about
speed and where you can or can’t ride.
Supergrandpa
by David M. Schwartz, illustrated by Bert Dodson (Mulberry, William Morrow
& Co. Paperback, 1991).
This is based on a true story of
a sixty-six year old grandfather in Sweden who was not allowed to enter a 1000
mile bike race in 1951 because of his age.
So he became a folk hero by entering clandestinely, riding through the
night, and completing the ride at the same time as the other riders.
Lessons:
That even older people can ride bicycles and race them too. The ability to ride a bicycle depends on your
skill and training, not your age or gender.
Curious
George Rides a Bike by H.A. Rey (Houghton Mifflin, 1952 and 1993)
One of the series of Curious
George books this classic takes the monkey George on a fun adventure to the
circus. George’s owner/friend gives him
a bike one day and advises him “be careful” . . . “and keep close to the house
while I am gone.” George’s first name,
of course is “curious” so he couldn’t stay close to the house. He helps a paper boy deliver papers but
forgets what he is doing and goes exploring.
He eventually finds the circus where he is engaged as a trick monkey who
rides a bike and, because he is a monkey and can climb trees, he rescues a lost
bear cub who climbed the tree and can’t get down. At the end of the story George finds his way
home.
Lessons:
George doesn’t wear a helmet so be sure and ask children what’s
missing and have a helmet sticker available to put on George. Talk about trick riding and how it is fun but
dangerous. Talk about how much fun it is
to go exploring by bicycle but how you have to pay attention to where you are
going.
(And tell
mommy and daddy where you are going when you go riding around the block.)
The
Bear’s Bicycle by Emilie Warren McLeod, illustrated by David
McPhail (Little, Brown and Company, 1975).
A little boy takes his teddy
bear riding every afternoon. The bicycle
rider is a very careful cyclist. He does
an ABC Quick Check on his bike before he rides.
He is careful coming out of his driveway and he signals. He walks his bike across the street. The bear, though is not always so
careful. The boy watches for car doors,
the bear does not. The boy watches for
hazards, like debris and dogs, bear does not.
The boy keeps to the right and warns pedestrians of his approach. He goes downhill carefully and stops at stop
signs. At the end of the afternoon he
wipes his feet before entering the house.
Lessons:
Bear is the little boy’s alter ego, trying to learn all of the safe
cycling behaviors described above, just as the little boy learned them as he
began to ride.
Anatole
by Eve Titus, illustrations by Pul Galdone (first published by McGraw Hill,
1956; Alfred A. Knopf books for young readers, 2006)
Anatole, the mouse, lived just
outside Paris in a small mouse village.
Every evening he and the other mice fathers pedaled their bikes into
Paris to find food for the family. They
used lights at night, of course. One
evening, after feeling guilty for stealing food all the time, Anatole snuck
into the cheese factory where he voluntarily left notes on the quality of all
the different cheeses. Eventually,
Anatole became the most trusted cheese taster in the world and the cheese
factory depended on his advice. Anatole
was happy that he did not have to steal cheese, but he earned it by working as
a taster.
Lessons:
The more Anatole rides every evening, the more he needs to wear a
helmet. Use lights at night. It is fun and healthy to ride your bike to go
to work (or school).
Gracie
Goat’s Big Bike Race by Erin Mirabella, illustrated by Lisa
Horstman (Velo Press, 2007)
Gracie Goat’s friends created a
bicycle racing team to enter a bike race.
But Gracie didn’t know how to ride a bike. She was so embarrassed to tell her friends
she didn’t know how to ride that she signed up for the race anyway. Gracie’s grandmother helped her to get over
all her worries and to develop self-confidence to learn how to ride. Gracie practiced and crashed and learned a
lot. But she entered the race and
finished it!
Lessons:
You can overcome your fears if you put your mind to it. Everything
new takes time and practice. The book
ends with pictures of different kinds of bicycling competitions: BMX, Mountain Biking, Track Cycling, and Road
Cycling. There is also a brief lesson on
the importance of drinking water when you ride a bicycle.
