By Ed Emberley, Anne Miranda
Every feeling gets its own bright monster, and every page has a punch-out mask your child can hold up and wear while you read.
One monster per feeling, each a big friendly color. The glad monster is yellow and wants to dance, the sad one is blue and needs a hug, the angry one turns red and stomps and roars, and there's a worried purple one, a loving one, and a silly one too. What sets this apart from the rest of the feelings shelf is that every feeling comes with a mask built right into the page. Your child punches it out, holds it up, and looks at you from behind the mad face or the happy one. The words rhyme and stay simple ('Glad is yellow, like the morning sun...'), and by the last page the same monster has worn every mood in the book.
This is feelings talk you can act out instead of just read. Holding up the angry mask and stomping around is a lot easier for a three-year-old than sitting still to talk about being angry, and the mask hands even the harder feelings a game to play. Because the whole thing is silly and physical, a child who squirms through a quieter feelings book will often stay with this one. It also makes a gentle point along the way: one monster wears all these moods, so a bad afternoon isn't who your child is — it's a mask that comes off.