Everybody Feels Angry! by Moira Butterfield and Holly Sterling
| Everybody Feels Angry! by Moira Butterfield and Holly Sterling | |
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| Category: For Sharing | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: An excellent look at the way that anger boils up and explodes, how to cope with it and help with dealing with a perfectly natural emotion. Excellent. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 24 | Date: October 2017 |
| Publisher: QED Publishing | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1784938550 | |
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Children don't deal easily with the emotions which flood the brain - and then chaos ensues. You can try discussing the problem before it happens or immediately afterwards, but children don't appreciate the abstract either. What you need is a specific example, an occasion which they'll readily recognise and can then see how the emotion boils up and explodes. Moira Butterfield has produced a series of books, illustrated by Holly Sterling, which take a couple of times when an emotion takes everything over. One applies to a girl and one to a boy and we see how the situations resolve themselves.
I looked at Everybody Feels... Angry! in some detail and I liked the title straight away. This is something that happens to everyone: you're not strange just because you're feeling this way. We start with the occasions when you're going to be angry and they're all completely valid. I'd feel angry too. Then we look at how it feels - the symptoms, if you like - and Butterfield has it spot on, even down to the bit where your fists squeeze up. We work through Sophie spotting the dog chewing her trainer whilst she's drawing. When she went to stop him her little brother drew on her picture. She was angry. She shouted so loudly that her brother cried and the dog hid under the table. Then she went into the garden and cried.
Ethan's Gran gave him a chocolate bar and he put it away in the cupboard for when he was hungry (that's the bit I wasn't entirely convinced by...) and when he went back it wasn't there, but the wrapper was on the table and his brother had chocolate around his mouth. Ethan was angry and stormed out into the garden. The good thing was that Sophie and Ethan could talk to each other and the people who'd upset them apologised.
Having seen the stories we then work through the trigger points of being angry, having some quiet time, talking about what had happened and putting things right with other people. There's then a discussion about the story 'words' such as 'stomping', 'bunched' and 'unfair'. They're useful points to chat about without attaching blame to anyone. Finally we have 'Next Steps' - ideas which might help to settle the mind and possibly prevent something similar from happening again.
It's an excellent book which deals with a common problem in a sensible and sensitive way. It helps children to cope with what's happening to them, to understand that it's natural. What I loved was that there was no suggestion of naughtiness at any point. Great stuff.
We've also seen Everybody Feels Happy! (I wasn't entirely happy to find that Ethan is happy going on holiday and bodyboarding, whilst Sophie's pleasure is in making cupcakes and bracelets...), Everybody Feels Scared! and Everybody Feels Sad!. I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
If these books appeal then you might also find I Want to Go First by Richard Byrne and I Can't Sleep! by Stephanie Blake useful.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Everybody Feels Angry! by Moira Butterfield and Holly Sterling at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Everybody Feels Angry! by Moira Butterfield and Holly Sterling at Amazon.com.
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