Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics

My 7 year old daughter loves this book, and she's really not into reading that much. I was hoping she would be interested and was very pleasantly surprised. The first half is in a comic strip format with explanations leading through the story. It is an excellent representation of what critical thinking process should be used by children when presented with extraordinary claims. (The example given is whether there is a ghost in someone's house. They ask the right questions and stick through the process to determine what had actually caused the noises, etc. ) The end of the book deals specifically with why you should be skeptical of religion. This section is clearly anti-religion.

I bought this book when I realized that my eight year old was beginning to be led ("beginning" is perhaps a mother's wishful thought!) by his peer group. The intent was to get him to be more skeptical in his thinking, as I believe that will serve him well in a variety of the peer pressure fronts. My son was interested in reading the book from the first page and responded well to the bite sized text paragraphs and the bringing to life of the lesson in the illustrations below.

I read this book with my 10 year old daughter. We enjoyed several good discussions as a result of the book. We have since been incorporating "maybe yes, maybe no" into our discussions of many topics. As a parent, this book gave me a starting point in talking with her about healthy skepticism. I'm sure "maybe yes, maybe no" will come up often during this future school year as she attends 5th grade in a parochial school. I also tried reading the book with my 8 year old son and it seemed he is not quite ready to grasp it. I think I will save it for next summer's read with him. I would recommend the book for any parents who are interested in helping kids learn how to think. We live in a very religiously conservative area, and this book already has been and likely will continue to be very helpful with my attempts to balance my humanism with the hyper-religious culture here.

My wife and I enjoyed this book immensely, both previewing it before passing it along to our young son. Remarkable clarity of thought and impressively comprehensive. Maybe Yes, Maybe No is enjoyable, focused and a great learning tool. It has been used as the basis of other discussions initiated by our son, the lead character of the book being paralleled to the situation of real life people. Absolutely a wonderful book that all young people should read.

I read this book to my kids, ages 8 and 10, and they absolutely loved it. One took it to bed that night to re-read and the other took it to school the next day. I've never seen such a strong positive reaction to a book from them. Yes, it's simplistic, but it's a kid's book; it has to be. As a parent, what i liked the most about it is the gentle manner in which difficult questions are introduced. "maybe yes, maybe no, what do you think?" We had to pause many times for thoughtful discussion. Kudos to Mr. Barker for an excellent book encouraging children to question the world around them and to try to apply scientific methods to understand it.