What are kids really thinking? Find out in this groundbreaking new book for adults.

Dear Highlights helps parents, teachers and caregivers find ways to actively listen, start conversations and better understand kids.

Through Highlights magazine’s 75-year history, our editors have personally answered every submission received from young readers — more than 2 million in all. Longtime editor in chief Christine French Cully has curated a collection of this remarkable correspondence (letters, emails, drawings and poems) in Dear Highlights, revealing an intimate and inspiring conversation with children.

From the timeless, everyday concerns of friendship, family and school, to the deeper issues of identity, sexuality, divorce and grief, this book provides a rare view of childhood in the voices — and the very handwriting — of children themselves.

This book encourages adults to lean in and listen to the children in their lives. It’s a way to reassure kids that they matter and what they think matters, and to help them understand that they have the power to become people who change the world.
Dear Highlights also captures a child's-eye view of some of the most important events of the past 75 years: the COVID-19 pandemic, 9/11, the Challenger disaster, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. By turns funny, heartbreaking, moving, and enlightening, this book will cause readers to reflect, to listen and to embrace the children in their lives.

From the foreword by nationally syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson:

“In times of great stress or trouble, Mr. Rogers advised children: ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ That’s exactly what children writing to ‘Dear Highlights’ find when they put pen to paper: helpers whose open-minded trust and kindness surely has made our world a better place.”