← The Almanac

This Week · Kindness

Kindness — is it harder to be kind to a stranger or a brother?

For littler ones: Who is harder to be nice to — someone you just met, or your own brother or sister?

Kindness sounds easy. Smile, share, hold the door. But here is the part worth chewing on. Is it harder to be kind to a stranger you'll never see again — or to the brother who took the last biscuit and knows just how to get under your skin? This week's three stories sit right on that question. A girl by the cinders is treated cruelly by the family that should love her, and is gentle anyway. A jealous stepmother cannot bear a child in her own house, while seven strangers in a cottage take that same child in. And a farmer in the hungry years sets a place at his table for men he has never met. Family and strangers, side by side. We're not handing you an answer. We're handing you the question — and three good stories to wonder it out loud with.

Talk about it

• Who do you find harder to be kind to — someone you just met, or your own brother or sister? What makes the harder one harder?
• In Snow White, her own family wanted her gone, but seven strangers took her in. Does knowing someone make it easier to be kind to them, or harder?
• Henry fed men he had never met. Is it easier to be kind to a stranger because you'll never see them again — or harder because you don't know them at all?