Filled with fun activities, this manual will help readers of all ages deal with anxiety.
An interactive guide focuses on managing anxiety.
Stress can feel overwhelming, especially for children. But with parental support, kids can learn to manage their fears, coping with strong emotions in healthy ways. Aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 12, Dessy Marinova’s manual provides valuable insights into emotional wellness for preadolescents. Asserting that stress management starts with role modeling, the author opens with a discussion about parental resilience, encompassing topics such as self-care, self-appreciation, and validation of feelings. Next, readers are led on a parent-child journey through emotional management. To serve as guides on this educational adventure, the author introduces Aimie, Brightie, and Dooie. Representing the amygdala, the region of the brain that controls the fear response, Aimie is portrayed as a protective presence. But this role can sometimes result in misguided fear reactions. Brightie, who embodies regions of the cerebral cortex, plays a part in fostering the imagination. When “enchanted” by Aimie, Brightie may deliver mental projections of worrisome thoughts. Lastly, Dooie signifies the brain’s motor responses, located in the prefrontal cortex. When influenced by signals from Aimie and Brightie, Dooie may spark such behaviors as running away and hiding from new experiences. Depicted as cute cartoon friends, these characters will help children and adults recognize and manage emotional reactions, demystifying the responses people feel to new or challenging stimuli. Designed as a workbook, the volume provides activities that encourage kids and adults to explore their reactions to stressful scenarios in their lives. Offering techniques to cope with anxiety, playfully referred to as “brain snacks,” the author coaches readers on contextualizing, managing, and releasing stressful thoughts. Presenting illustrations and insights by the author’s young daughter, Lora Marinova, the guide thoughtfully balances science and accessibility. Yet one of the work’s most beneficial elements may be its framing of anxiety as a protective response. Describing anxiety as the product of a “Super-Protective-Aimie,” the book effectively destigmatizes fear, encouraging children and adults to see stress as a normal—even positive—hormonal response, which can result in happy outcomes.
Filled with fun activities, this manual will help readers of all ages deal with anxiety.Pub Date: June 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-912085-3
Page Count: 308
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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