By Janan Cain
A rhyming picture book that gives one big feeling its own page — silly, frustrated, jealous, proud — each with a bold painted face, so your child gets a word to go with what they're feeling.
Each page gives one feeling its own short rhyme and one big painting. Frustrated has hair standing on end and fists clenched over a puzzle. Jealous glares off to the side. Proud stands tall holding up a finished painting. Scared curls up small in the dark. The verses are easy to chant, like 'Silly is when I make a funny face,' and the book works through the whole range of feelings. The prickly ones sit right next to the happy ones, and none of them gets treated as the bad one to have.
Some children pick up a feeling through the body before they have the word for it, and this book leads with the outside of the emotion first. You see the posture, the face, the clenched hands, and then you get the name. That helps when your child clearly feels something but can't tell you what, and it helps a child learning English, since the painting carries the meaning on its own. The rhyme does its part too. The lines are short enough to chant, so the words stick. And the harder feelings get the same steady treatment as the happy ones, drawn just as big and named the same way.