This article explores the attraction of Canadian elementary teachers to children's stories that narrate trauma, particularly the trauma associated with First Nations peoples' experiences in Canadian residential schools as told by Indigenous authors. The teachers' responses to these texts are conceived of as occurring within a "contact zone," situated between dominant white culture (the culture shared by the teachers) and the historically marginalized cultures represented in the stories. An interpretative lens of critical nostalgia is developed, placing the question of contact zones within the context of memory studies, trauma studies, curriculum theory and critical pedagogies related to remembrance. The paper identifies the need for developing critical nostalgia as a productive form of pedagogical remembrance, drawing on Roger Simon's adaptation to an educational context of Walter Benjamin's notion of the dialectical image.