By Molly Bang
A little girl gets so angry she could explode, and the book stays right with her until the storm passes.
Sophie is playing with her gorilla when her sister grabs it, her mother takes her sister's side, and Sophie trips over a truck on the way down into a full, roaring rage. She wants to smash the whole world to smithereens. The pages go hot and jagged, red and orange, and Sophie 'is a volcano, ready to explode.' Then she runs. Out the door, past the trees, all the way to the woods, where she cries for a while and watches the water and lets the wind blow her hair. When she's ready, she climbs an old beech tree, looks out over the wide green world, and heads back to a family that's glad to see her.
Some children feel anger in their whole body and don't yet have anywhere to put it; this is the book for them. Sophie doesn't get talked out of her fury or told to use her words. She gets to be enormously, honestly angry, and then she finds her own way back down through running, crying, and a quiet tree. A child who has ever wanted to smash everything sees themselves on the page and, just as important, sees that the storm ends and home is still there. The pictures carry the emotion so plainly that even a three-year-old reads the mood off the color.