LUNA FINDS LOVE EVERYWHERE

A girl sees love all around her in this book about dealing with disappointment and finding gratitude by mental health clinician Ali.

Luna is very excited to go to the park and meet her friends so they can all play with her new rainbow ball. But when she arrives, her pals want to finish playing with a scooter. Before they finish, a thunderstorm sends everyone home. Luna is upset, but with help from her mom—and readers, whom she asks for assistance—she focuses on the love all around her instead of her disappointment and realizes she can share it with others. Ali’s previous works, including The Self-Love Workbook for Teens (2020), are aimed at older audiences, but this distillation of coping skills in picture-book form will work well for preschoolers or kindergarteners. Luna’s style of addressing readers directly will be familiar to young viewers of fourth-wall–breaking cartoon shows, such as Dora the Explorer; the text density and advanced vocabulary (frustrated, supportive) make this most appropriate for shared reading. The calming technique known as “bubble breathing” is particularly well described, although the other family members’ constantly even tempers feel a bit unrealistic. Oliveira’s cheerful, full-color cartoon illustrations, featuring a cast of varying skin tones, rely on shapes more than linework, and their layering gives them a mixed-media feel.

A strong read-aloud introduction to dealing with frustrations.