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“Charlie’s Ever Warming Blankets,” designed for 3rd-6th grade students at Plymell Elementary in Garden City, Kan., combined a four-week study on the concept of social justice in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with a charitable project. Students read and discussed Dahl’s work and voted as a group to make blankets for children of jailed women in Ecuador. Children under the age of 2 years old remain with their mother while she serves her sentence and often go without simple comfort items such as blankets or toys.

The project inspired students to discuss what it would be like for children to spend their first years in jail, how life can be unfair and how a small gift can make a big difference. Fifty students then spent two weeks making blankets out of fleece and flannel to send the children of inmates. The words “paz,” “fe” and “amor” (“peace,” “faith” and “love”) were stitched into the corner of each flannel blanket.