Sometimes our emotions can overwhelm us, particularly if we are not able to identify why we are feeling them. This twenty-six-poem collection offers children an emotional glossary for understanding some of the most powerful feelings that they experience. From an Angry Lion to a Zealous Ant, emotions are personified as animals through the use of rhyming verse and charming illustrations.
A themed reading guide detailing the best titles for children and young people aged 0–18 which was produced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The guide was a ‘first aid kit’ for worries, sadness, loneliness, anxiety and any number of feelings and hopefully a great many young readers found relief and solace in seeing their lives reflected on the page and gained an understanding of what others may be quietly going through.
Mindfulness is a concept that adults maybe familiar with: understanding how we think and react to our own thoughts. But how do you explain this to young children? In this truly outstanding book by Trigger Publishing (who specialise in mental health and mental wellbeing), we have a child who sees her thoughts manifested in the form of a puppy called Ollie.
Breathe Like a Bear is a beautifully illustrated book of practical ‘mindful moments’ to help children relax and feel calm. Author Kira Willey walks us through thirty different child-friendly techniques for relaxing, focusing or building energy.
‘Stories are about transformation, about starting as one thing and ending as another. And in the middle, when you don’t know what’s going to happen, all you have is hope.’
Lily spends her life pretending to be invisible, but no matter how hard she tries, she is a constant fixation for bullies and mean girls at school. Her home life isn’t much better, with a father who works away and a mother who refuses to leave the house.
An increasing number of picturebooks explore emotions and teach children about positive and negative feelings. This book goes one step further, providing a practical technique to help children deal with negative emotions in a healthy way. Irish sports star, musician and mental-health activist Niall Breslin teams up with Irish illustrator Sheena Dempsey to produce this picturebook about facing, and ultimately overcoming, your fears.
The simplicity of this beautiful book belies its big message about life, happiness and being open to good things. Phrased in plain poetic lines, deftly translated by Daniel Hahn, the book allows children and adults to engage with the small joys that visit our lives and are all too easily missed. People build high walls, make themselves busy, spend and stretch themselves in all kinds of ways, and miss the blessings that have been there all along.
Paper Avalanche is about hoarding – a topic that can be seen sensationalised on television but is not often discussed in everyday life. Written by Lisa Williamson, author of The Art of Being Normal, this young adult book is about a fourteen-year-old girl called Ro who lives with her hoarder mother, Bonnie. Ro struggles with her mother’s issues, torn between the need to care for her whilst resenting the difficulties that Bonnie’s hoarding brings to Ro’s life.
‘Glacfaimid sos anois óna bhfuil ar siúl againn.’ An bhfuil abairt ar bith níos suaimhní, níos séimhe ná sin mar thúsphointe chun d’intinn a chiúnú agus anáil a tharraingt?
