Children's Literature
Kids hear about vaping and smoking long before anyone sits them down to explain what it actually does. We get there first — with books built for the ages that need them, not warning labels.
Our children's literature program produces short, illustrated books that explain how the lungs work, why they matter, and what puts them at risk — written at a reading level kids can actually engage with, not adapted down from an adult pamphlet.
Every title is reviewed for medical accuracy before it goes to print, then placed where kids already are: classroom read-alouds, school libraries, pediatric waiting rooms, and community health fairs run alongside our screening events.
Where the books go
We work directly with elementary school teachers, children's librarians, and pediatric clinics — prioritizing the same low-income communities our screening program serves, so the message and the medicine reach the same families.
For teachers & librarians
If you work with a classroom, library, or clinic waiting room that could use a set, tell us where and roughly how many kids you'd like to reach.
Request a Reading SetMeet Brian the Bear.
Brian the Bear
“You don't have to be the biggest animal in the forest to change the air everyone breathes.”
Brian is a young grizzly cub who spends his days the way any cub would — climbing trees, splashing for fish in the river, napping in the sun with his family close by. Life changes when a power plant goes up at the edge of the woods, burning coal for the town nearby. At first, Brian barely notices the haze it leaves behind. Like everyone else, he just keeps playing.
But the smoke doesn't go away, and neither does what it's doing to him. He starts falling behind on runs he used to win, wheezing on climbs that never used to wind him, too breathless some days to finish a swim. When he finally tells Ranger Rodger, the forest's ranger and resident doctor, "I don't feel like me anymore," Rodger takes a look and gives it a name: asthma, brought on by the smoke in the air. Then he gives Brian an inhaler, and teaches him how — and when — to use it.
The inhaler brings Brian's forest back to him: the climbing, the running, the reaching the top of a tree before anyone else. But the story doesn't end there. He keeps looking back at the plant on the edge of the woods, still filling his sky with smoke, and he can't quite let it go. Managing his own asthma was never going to be enough for him — what he decides to go after next is the air itself.
From draft to classroom.
Write & illustrate
Chapter volunteers draft the story; a medical reviewer checks every claim about the lungs, smoking, and vaping before illustration begins.
Pilot with a classroom
A partner teacher or librarian reads an early copy with real kids, and we revise based on what actually lands.
Print & distribute
Finished copies go out through schools, libraries, and clinics — free, with no strings attached.