By Gail Silver
When Anh explodes at his grandfather, Grandpa doesn't punish him, he tells him to go and be with his anger, and Anh meets it face to face as a wild red creature.
Anh is playing happily until Grandfather says it's time to stop, and just like that his anger flares. He shouts that he hates his grandfather and stamps off. But Grandfather doesn't scold him or send him away in trouble. He says something surprising instead: go to your room and be with your anger. Alone, Anh's anger takes on a body, a hairy, spiky red creature that wants to smash and stomp and yell, and for a while the two of them tear around the room together. Then Anh starts to breathe, and as he does the creature gets smaller and smaller, until Anh is calm enough to go back downstairs and sit close to Grandfather again.
Where the louder books on this shelf show anger erupting, this one shows what to do once it has. Grandfather's line, be with your anger, is the whole gift: the feeling isn't wrong and it isn't banished, it's something you sit beside until it settles. Drawing the anger as a creature Anh can actually look at gives a child that same little bit of distance from their own fury. It's the most explicitly calm-down-and-breathe book here, and a lovely counterweight to the ones where the tiger wins for a while.