Emotions reflect the gamut of human experience. They include a spectrum from frigid despair, to scalding anger, immobilizing fear, to unbridled joy. Every emotion has value, serves a purpose, and bears expressing. Sometimes emotions can disrupt or overwhelm. Regulating emotions takes skill even for adults. Children benefit from learning how to express and manage emotions in a safe and healthy way, how to name them, how to talk about them, and how to express them. This ability is an important element of Emotional Intelligence.
2020 Teacher’s Choice Awards Winner You Are Your Strong by Danielle Dufayet offers an engaging an important book that models emotional regulation skills. Gorgeous, multicultural illustrations breathe the story to life. Dufayet’s spare, rhythmic text explains that sometimes kids can turn to others for support and encouragement. Other times, they can dig deep within themselves and discover their own inner strengths and abilities. Sometimes, kids can be a resource for others! There’s no “right” way; there are many ways and each serves its purpose.
This book lends itself to discussing not only how kids can handle their own emotions but also how they can notice the ways other people handle theirs. Conversations can explore when it is safe to try to handle things alone and when kids should turn to an adult for assistance.
For children confronting divorce or any of life’s big issues, this book offers a way to talk about big feelings and to reassure children their feelings are normal, manageable, and okay. Books like this encourage conversations about feelings and help kids manage them by providing then a vocabulary and the support they need to understand and manage their emotions. This is the way we nurture their Emotional Intelligence skills which is an important life skill tool.
Adoption-Attunement Lens– Even if they are not involved in an open adoption, all adopted children have both a birth family and an adopted family. Research reveals that adopted children think about and fantasize about their birth parents. They wrestle with questions about what specifically caused them to be placed for adoption. Unsurprisingly, adoptees have strong, complicated emotions about this reality. Reading this book with a parent can logically segue into discussions about these feelings. Such conversations provide children with essential support and can help clear up any misconceptions that blame themselves for their adoption.
All of these books are available on Amazon and in local bookstores.
Before tackling the difficult stuff, read books which reassure children and build a firm foundation of security. Nancy Tillman, author of the NY Times Bestselling 
Ida, Always
As a little boy prepares for bed the night before his first day of school Mama comments 
Some essential life lessons we must teach kids:
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tale provides a peek into the inner world of one Billy Bramble. Not identified as an adoptee, Billy definitely serves as the poster child for kids wrestling with the demons of trauma. (The origins of his trauma are not revealed. This helps to make the story connect with a wide audience)
Poor Billy suffers as much from Gobber’s destructive behaviors as his family, classmates, and teachers. Gobber’s presence is so formidable, so consuming and so committed to Billy’s failure, that the reader empathizes with Billy’s struggles and cheers for his success. The brilliance of Sally’s writing allows the reader to feel Billy’s anguish and frustration as he struggles to rein in his self-saboteur.
distracting him. He yearns to have the privileges and self-control of other kids and like them, to have his own Facebook account. The closest he can come is to name his pet chicken Facebook. I know, right. Talk about a stacked deck! Fortunately, Donovan counterbalances the stresses of Billy’s challenges with a healthy dose of humor and irony. She succeeds in making Billy a character that readers root for instead of dismissing him as “other” or someone whom they can pigeonhole as odd or weird.
litany of teacher-corrections and directives familiar to all kids, but especially the Billies of the world. Readers will identify when Billy receives a letter from the teacher that reports on his latest transgression. We all know what it is like to have to face the aftermath of a poor choice.
The one spark of hope for release from Gobber’s reign of terror is cooking. It provides Billy an exit ramp from the super highway of chaos and creates a place of refuge and redemption for Billy. Gobber makes a formidable enemy; he does not surrender easily.
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It feels appropriate to conclude the month of February with a final nod to affairs of the heart. Beyond romance, each of us yearns to love and be loved. We wish to be seen and accepted as our authentic selves. We need to be appreciated for our differences as much as for what we have in common with family and friends. It is our differences that make us unique. This acceptance is difficult to achieve.
How would you reply if you asked yourself, “What is your heart like?” What would you predict your child might reply? 
Valentine’s day brings thoughts of love. Add a sprinkle of multiculturalism to your celebrations with the charming One Love by Cedella Marley, daughter of the Reggae artist, Bob Marley. Illustrations by Vanessa Brantley-Newton enliven the text, based on his song, “One Love.” Beautiful multi-media pictures will brighten the reader’s day. The mood of the story is upbeat and positive and reinforces the idea that we are all part of the community of earth, that we all can choose to work, laugh and love together. Five stars
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