Do you have a feeling that's visiting today?
Can you open your door and invite it to play?
Visiting Feelings encourages children to treat their feelings like guests -- welcome them in, get to know them, and perhaps learn why they are visiting. Through this purposeful and mindful exploration, Visiting Feelings harnesses a young child's innate capacity to fully experience the present moment and invites children to sense, explore, and befriend all of their feelings with acceptance and equanimity.
A Note to Parents provides more information about emotional awareness and mindfulness, plus practical advice and activities for introducing mindfulness into daily family routine.
K-Gr 3-Through a poetic text, children are encouraged to identify and explore their emotions. "Do you have a feeling/that's visiting today?/Can you open your door/and invite it to play?/Can you ask what it wants,/and then check it out?" Readers are asked to embrace their feelings, to treat them like friends. Feelings are described through the use of similes and metaphors: "Is it sharp like stepping/on stones with bare feet?/Or smooth like ice cream-your favorite treat?" They are also personified: "Is it warm or cold?/Sour or sweet?/Does it shiver with fear/when the two of you meet?" The full-page, digitally created illustrations feature hand-painted textures and overlays. They have a dreamy quality as the feelings swirl around the youngsters in soft pastel colors. The end pages offer additional information for parents. The high-quality, appealing art will hold the attention of younger children, but discussion will be necessary for understanding this lyrical flow of moods. Paired with Wendy Cooper's A Is Amazing: Poems About Feelings (Frances Lincoln, 2013), the book has a lot of potential for teaching students how to describe their reactions to different situations. -Sandra Welzenbach, Villarreal Elementary School, San Antonio, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.