Interest Level: 3 to 8 years
Author: Britney Winn Lee
Illustrator: Jacob Souva
Publisher: Beaming Books, 2019
Retail: $17.99

Are you raising or teaching a child with big feelings? The Boy with Big, Big Feelings is such a great book and is a great way to start a conversation to validate all the feelings our young ones experience! As a sensitive mom herself to two boys with sensory processing disorder (SPD) and social anxiety, I definitely recognized familiar scenes in this sweet book. It features a sensitive little boy whose feelings are so big that they show up in his body. The shadows at night, the rumble of a truck, or a change in plans lead to big emotions. The boy in the book even feels the feelings of those around him, something my now ten-year-old recently shared happens to him. One day on the playground the boy meets a friend who feels things a little extra big, too. In sharing their big hearts, they also discover that other children experience big emotions and that feelings aren’t meant to be hidden away.

Beaming Books shares six ways to help little ones with big feelings:
*Celebrate Sensitivity
*Rehearse Transitions
*Give Language
*Stay Steady
*Maintain Boundaries
*Discuss Your Feelings, too.

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The storyline in The Boy With Big, Big Feelings reminds me in many ways of one of my favorite books from Barefoot Books, The Boy Who Grew Flowers! Rink Bowagon is a shy boy who has a very unique talent of sprouting flowers all over his body whenever there is a full moon. Because he is shy and different, his horrible teacher puts him at the back of the room and his classmates ignore him. One day a new girl joins the class, and Rink's life is changed forever. I won't give the story away but will say that it melts my heart each time I read it. The new girl, Angelina Quiz not only has one leg shorter than the other but also holds a secret that deepens their friendship that much more. 

​At the time I first read this story my oldest son had been recently diagnosed with a genetic syndrome called Cornelia deLange Syndrome or CdLS. We didn't know anything about CdLS but first impressions from the research showed a life of challenges and a grim prognosis. Though our little boy was born "different" from most, we loved him unconditionally as our little Benjamin. It was worrisome to think that he would grow up in a world where people wouldn't love and care for him the way we did. Reading The Boy Who Grew Flowers brought so many tears as Rink's differences are embraced by a new friend. It melted my heart and will always be one of my favorites. When I learned that the author, Jen Wojtowicz, wrote it in recognition of her brother who has autism, it meant even more. Jen is an artist who happens to write and teaches artists who also happen to have disabilities. I am so grateful she created this beautiful, well-written story and that Steve Adams brought it to life with his dreamy illustrations. I am also incredibly grateful to have met many people over the past 14 years who embrace our joyful, unique son, Benjamin, and see him and not his disabilities first. He is Benjamin who happens to have CdLS. 

Interest Level: 4 - 8 years
Author: Rob Sanders
Illustrator: Jared Andrew Schorr
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2018

I love this book! It’s a great introduction to peaceful protest for our kids. It’s an ABC adventure in activism and includes a diverse and inclusive cast of characters! 

The cut paper illustrations are gorgeous and detailed and bring the book to life. 

The endnotes include an overview of the history of peaceful protest. This could lead to deeper research into Thoreau, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The glossary is a helpful resource in answering children’s questions. I highly recommend it! Extend your reading with  letter writing, cut paper art projects, sign making, researching social justice movements, and more! 

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Interest level: Ages 4 - 8 years
Author: Meera Sriram
Illustrator: Mariona Cabassa
Publisher: Barefoot Books, 2020
Retail: $16.99 & $8.99 (also available in Spanish)
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Have you ever searched for the perfect gift for your mother? In A Gift for Amma a young girl visits an Indian market in search of the perfect gift for her Amma. As she travels from stall to stall she discovers a rainbow of colors: saffron orange, jasmine white, lotus pink, peacock green, vermilion red, and more. The way Meera Sriram describes the sights, sounds, and smells of the market transports the reader. If you are a cook, you will especially love the pages of saffron, mint, coriander, sweetcorn, kebabs, turmeric, sweets, and tea. 
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Mariona Cabassa's illustrations are vibrant and offer a sensory feast. The peacock page just might be my favorite. The richness and design lines repeated in the peacock feathers and herb leaves is so soothing to the eye.  

This book includes endnotes that further describe the items you might find at a market in the author's hometown of Chennai and introduces markets around the world! The real treat for me was discovering a page of photographs at. the end of this beautiful book featuring the author with her Amma and the actual market she visited. In her dedication the author honors her Amma's gentle strength. I feel the combination of descriptive text and gorgeous illustrations create a book with gentle strength, as well. I highly recommend it as a wonderful Own Voices addition to your home or classroom library. 

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Interest Level: Ages 2-100!
Author and Illustrator: Innosanto Nagara
Publisher: Triangle Square, 2013
Retail: $10.99 board book

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Are you an activist? If you are, you will love A is for Activist! This little board book packs a progressive punch! It's an alphabet book, a call to action, and a call to unite in the fight for social justice, climate justice, and more. The illustrations are powerful and include folks young and old from all walks of life. You'll recognize activists from different movements (Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.) and young ones will get to search for the cat hidden on each page. 

One of my favorite pages celebrates our diversity.         

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Dance Like a Leaf arrived recently and I am head over heels! The poetic descriptions by A.J. Irving and rich illustrations by Claudia Navarro are almost too much for me. This tale of relationship, loss, and celebrating memories touches your heart and stirs up all the feels. The sensory images of sipping tea, wearing scarves, and dancing like leaves capture the closeness between a little girl and her grandmother. It is a precious introduction to talk about the difficult topic of death with young children, but also how we might honor our loved ones and celebrate their memory. Recommended for ages 4-8 years. Available from independent publisher of the most gorgeous books,
​Barefoot Books! 
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​I have been thinking about my grandmothers and know I’m lucky to have been close to them all. I especially cherish spending the last chapters of my Grandma Pat’s 100 years getting to visit each week. I remember red lipstick, smoky afghans, white carpets, the clip, clip, clip of coupons, orange fish swimming on the walls, and the most joyful laugh I think I’ve ever heard. Angie, Virginia, Patricia, you are the angels I summon when I need a light to find my way.

Dance Like a Leaf will touch all who read it, and how lovely to have it available in Spanish and French editions. Thank you, Barefoot Books!

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Do you want to raise children who believe their ideas and actions can make a difference in this world? If so, you will love my featured books today! Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea features Kamala Harris and her sister, Maya, when they were young and is based on a true story. The story is retold by Kamala’s niece, Meena Harris. In the book the girls have an idea to turn the empty lot near their apartment into a playground. They show persistence, learn to advocate with spoken and written words, and gather allies, as they work towards their goal. In spite of disappointments they persist and problem solve one step at a time with and without the adults in their lives.

The dialogue, simple language, and bits of repetition make this story accessible to read independently for ages 6-8 and fun as a read aloud for ages 3 and above. My favorite line from the book was:

    “No one could do everything. But everyone could do something.” ​

The illustrations by Ana Ramirez Gonzalez are colorful and cheerful. I enjoyed learning that Ana grew up in Guanajuato, Mexico and lives in Oakland, California. She worked on the movie, Coco, and illustrated the companion picture book Coco: Miguel and the Grand Harmony by Matt de la Pena. 

The last pages of the book include an author’s note and photographs of the girls. This is a wonderful story celebrating girl power and the strength of community. I recommend it as an addition to your home or classroom library. This would make an excellent gift especially at this historic moment of Senator Kamala Harris being the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States.

Disclosure: For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. If you purchase items through these links, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. 

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When I first read Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea I immediately thought of the book, The More We Get Together, written by Celeste Cortright and illustrated by Betania Zacarias. Cortright cleverly takes a traditional sing along and creates a rhyming, lighthearted call to action for young people and their families. When we use alternative modes of transportation, help others, recycle, and speak up about things we want to change, we can make the world a better place. The four pages of endnotes share specific ways kids can make a difference and participate in community building and teamwork.

The colorful illustrations are inviting for young children. Children will recognize themselves in this book as it is both racially diverse and inclusive of different abilities. The book includes a man with a visual impairment being assisted by his guide dog, a boy wearing noise canceling headphones, a boy with a prosthetic leg, a doctor using crutches, and folks using wheelchairs. Men cook, women do yard work, and children take action to make their community a better place for all! And here’s an extra fun addition…there’s an animal that appears throughout the book that little ones can try to find.

I highly recommend this engaging, vibrant sing along from Barefoot Books for ages 2-6. The addition of the endnotes make it a great gift for siblings.

Beyond the Books

Discussion Questions (recommended for ages 4 and above):

1. What do these books have in common?
2. What’s different about each of them?
3. Do any of the characters remind you of yourself or someone you know? Share what you notice and what you or they have in common.
4. Have you ever wanted to create or change something in your home? In your neighborhood? In your school? In your town? ​

Take Action:

1. Choose something you would like to create or change.
2. Make a plan.
3. Share it with your family if it’s something you want to change in your home.
4. If you want to create or change something in your neighborhood, school, or town research the issue and gather facts. Ask adults for help if you need to.
5. Write a letter to someone who can help with the change you want to make. You can use Kamala and Maya’s letter as an example. Explain why you think something needs to change and how that can happen. What is your
6. Ask your friends and family to sign your letter or write their own letters.
7. Persist! Celebrate when you reach your goal!

When my three-year-old isn't jumping on his trampoline, running laps around our old Victorian house, or losing himself in a world of trains and tracks, he is delighting me with his language and with making sense of the world around him. The other morning as I was getting ready for the day, he sat on a stool studying me. He then asked,

    "Mom, is your hair darker than mine?"
    "Yes."
He sat quietly for a bit then said,
    "Your hair is dark like the night, and mine is light like the morning."

And he left to play with Thomas and Henry once again. 

I know my son is not alone in his poetic way of making sense of his world. All children are born seeing the world through the eyes of a poet. It is only when we adults interfere and try to "teach" them about poetry that they stop acting like poets.

Kenneth Koch, poet and educator who wrote Wishes, Lies and Dreams in 1970, approached students in New York city schools as natural poets. "I let the children make a good deal of noise. Children do when they are excited, and writing poetry is exciting." I admire Kenneth Koch greatly, and his work has inspired my teaching for the past twenty years both within the elementary school classroom as well as in my writing workshops with Stories by the Sea. My hope and intention through my work is to bring each child and adult back to his or her natural poet within, to slow down, to see the world through new eyes, and to write from the heart. I wish this for my son and I wish it for each of us.

A few weeks ago while home on a typical work-at-home-day with my lively toddler (and big brother off to school), I had one of those unsettling parenting moments. You know, the ones when you're engrossed in washing dishes, doing laundry, or browsing Facebook, and you don't hear the crash of trucks or the roaring of dinosaurs from the other room. That moment when all you hear is silence. Taking a deep breath, I walked quickly from the kitchen through the office into the playroom. There he stood, stripped down to his diaper, ball point pen in hand! Proudly, with both arms opened wide, and looking up at me with those big, beautiful, brown eyes he announced, "Ta-Da!". 

He ran over to the corner of the room to show me his masterpiece. He was pleased with himself as he showed me his writing on the built-in bookshelves and the hydrangea blue walls. It was all I could do not to giggle. It was most definitely not a time to scold or squash his enthusiasm. It was a time to remind him that we use pens on paper not on walls, and we proceeded to find the Magic Eraser.

Have you heard of the Magic Eraser? I hadn't until a friend told me about this magical invention after the debut of our little wall artist and writer when he was just entering toddlerhood! This handy sponge-like invention should be part of every baby registry, in my opinion! My first son was never able to express his creativity quite in this way due to a physical disability, so I was late in learning about the Magic Eraser. Knowing we had some magic on the basement shelves made it easier to keep my cool and focus on all that was wonderful in this moment!

Magic Erasers aside, how could I be upset with my budding artist and writer when I had encouraged it from the start. You may have read the same recommendations I had: Provide all sorts of writing materials from as early as 18 months; let your child see you writing; celebrate the process, don't focus on the product; listen to what your child tells you about his writing; let her write in different settings; and on it goes.

So that's what we've been doing. We write in the sand at the beach. We write in the condensation on the bathroom window when it's "potty time" (old house=low Victorian windows). We write on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. We write lists, lots of lists. We write the letters of our names and notice them in words at the grocery store, in the kitchen, on signs, and yes, in BOOKS!

Literacy, as we know, is about more than reading. It involves listening, speaking, and writing, too! We try to follow our sons' leads and readiness to learn more about letters, words, and this writing thing. And in this family of educators, readers, list-makers, and occasional writers, this tiny writer's early attempts at writing, discovering cause and effect, and exerting his independence are cause for celebration!