by Nick Ortner & Alison Taylor & illustrated by Michelle Polizzi ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2018
While the use of “mindful” in the title will grab the attention of many, readers seeking tools to truly explore mindfulness...
A little girl breathes her “magic breath,” transforming worry and sadness into serenity.
Learning to breathe deeply to find calm can be a wonderful coping tool for children—but not as instructed here. The book states that breathing deeply can help us to “push some of those thoughts away” when we are nervous or sad, a technique that can be augmented by bringing to mind happy thoughts to replace the sad ones. This strategy may be effective, but it is not (as the subtitle states) “mindful,” as true mindfulness practice encourages noticing everything as it is, even the unpleasant parts of life. The advice also seems to assume an audience of relative privilege. For vulnerable children, strategies of intentionally replacing unpleasant thoughts with more favorable ones can, far from bringing peace, actually reinforce destructive messages. Children experiencing abuse or discrimination often receive messages from adults in power that they deserve what is happening to them, so telling such children to simply breathe away their anxiety masks the very real issue underlying the symptom. Even leaving that concern aside, the book has very little to engage young readers. It offers no characters or plot, and most of the illustrations are simple mishmashes of color used to convey happy or sad breaths.
While the use of “mindful” in the title will grab the attention of many, readers seeking tools to truly explore mindfulness with children are better served elsewhere. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-268776-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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by Julia Cook & Garrett Gunderson ; illustrated by Josh Cleland ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2024
An educational and uplifting foundation in financial mindsets and rules of thumb.
A walking, talking billfold of cash takes readers through the ins and outs of money.
Held together by a shiny gold clip and often accompanied by anthropomorphic coins, our narrator is a smiley, positive presence who eats pizza and rides a bike, just like us! Money explains its value as well as how to earn it (mowing lawns, selling lemonade), spend it, save it, and share it. The narrator uses clothing as a metaphor to explain different forms of money—sometimes the narrator dons “digital and crypto clothes,” though the author doesn’t elaborate on these. A similar reference to “credit card coats” is accompanied by a warning on overspending. Most commendable are reminders of readers' self-worth: Though readers are encouraged to invest in themselves, it’s made abundantly clear that money does not confer value to people. A message about earning interest is followed by a wordless page of coins and bills passing by a bank and a credit union—concepts that are a bit too advanced to describe in detail for this book’s audience. For now, tracking savings in a clear jar (not a piggy bank) is advanced enough. A guinea pig appears throughout the cheerful, textured art, making a suitably cute sidekick for the narrator.
An educational and uplifting foundation in financial mindsets and rules of thumb. (money tips) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781728271262
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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by Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu ; illustrated by Rafael López ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2022
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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