From School Library Journal
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
Review
Visiting Feelings presents an exquisite lesson in mindfulness and dealing with emotions by letting children know it s OK to feel however they may and simply embrace the experience. The book stresses that feelings are neither bad nor good, they just are. Welcoming your feelings in, and actually making friends with them, is the best way to learn more about yourself and what your emotions are trying to teach you. The lesson is simple yet deep and playfully accessible for children and adults alike. --AnxietyFreeChild.com
This lyrically illustrated beauty of a book is the doorway into accepting feelings that arise and accepting oneself for experiencing those feelings. From the first page through the last, a light-hearted, rhyming poem encourages the young reader to welcome and listen to feelings, as though they are visitors, inquiring into shape, color image,location in the body, and the origin of the feeling. In the author s note to parents, she includes activities adults and children can do together to increase meaning and connection between them, along with breathing and self-awareness exercises.
Written by a psychologist and yoga teacher, this book belongs on the shelf of everyone who serves children parents, grandparents, therapists, aunts, uncles and teachers. --LifeForce Yoga
A beautifully illustrated children s book; a soft poem that is a lullaby to children in preschool or primary grades that takes a mindfulness-based approach to the many feelings that children will experience...
Visiting Feelings by Lauren Rubenstein, a clinical psychologist, and illustrated by Shelly Hehenberger is one of those books you can cuddle up and read with a child on the couch or before bedtime. --- Lily's Blackboard
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