Feel Your Feelings

PreS-Gr 1–Using takeoffs of emojis in vivid colors of avocado, mustard, and brick, Stoll and Williams offer children a lexicon of feelings, page by page, to test out. “All emotions have their place. / You show them on your face. / You think about them in your mind. / You act them out all the time. / It’s appealing /To feel your feelings. / We’ll show you how, /And you’ll be wowed.” Issues of scansion aside, that page works almost as a menu, allowing children to point to the face or emoji that most characterizes what’s going on inside. Then the catalog of feelings begins: glad, sad, calm, mad, silly, worry, love, disgust, brave, scared, grateful. Readers are told to feel it and then to shake it out and move on. As a guided lesson with a helpful adult, this may be useful. But to give every emotion a one-size-fits-all patter, and to imply that you try them on and take them off simply trivializes both children and their feelings. A child approaching the book independently may find it too glib.