By JoAnn Deak
A picture book that labels the real parts of the brain and explains, in plain words, that effort and mistakes are what make it grow.
This isn't a story, it's a friendly tour of your child's own head. It walks through what the brain does and names the parts as it goes: the cerebrum for thinking, the cerebellum for balance and movement, the amygdala for feelings, the hippocampus for memory, the prefrontal cortex for making decisions. Then it gets to the point it came to make. The brain is stretchy, like elastic. Every time your child tries something hard and fumbles it, the connections inside are growing stronger. Mistakes aren't the opposite of learning; the book says they're part of how it happens, and it shows you a diagram to back it up.
Some children won't take encouragement from a grown-up. Tell them they'll get it with practice and they hear a nice thing you're obliged to say. This book doesn't encourage so much as explain, and for some children that lands differently. It gives them a physical, mechanical reason that struggling is doing something, and points at the organ where it's happening. A child who's decided they're just not a math person, or not a reader, is holding a belief about their own wiring, and this is a book that pushes back on the wiring. Be clear about what you're picking up, though. It's a lesson in a picture-book coat, written to deliver an idea rather than tell a story. There's no character to love and no plot to follow. That's why it can work when a story would be too roundabout, and also why it won't hold a child who came for a story.