"The Color Monster" by Anna Llenas

[practical]

"The Color Monster" by Anna Llenas is a beautiful children's book about feelings. The reason why I'm writing a review in this section is that I think it might be helpful to talk about feelings with our children. I certainly never learned to do so in my FOO (where feelings were not acknowledged) and would have been grateful to have this book available to me when my children were little. It is an excellent spring board to talk to children about their feelings, how to figure them out and acknowledge them.

Summary
The Color Monster is all mixed up with his feelings, signified by him being multicolored, so his friend tries to sort through his feelings with him, addressing happiness, sadness, anger, fear, calmness and love. The pictures for these feelings in the form of pop-ups are simply beautiful and expressive. I could feel the emotions. It is about recognizing your feelings and how often you experience different feelings at the same time, and how it becomes easier to deal with them, once you understand which feelings you are experiencing, instead of being all mixed up. These are things I find sometimes even as an adult hard to do.

This is most likely the best book I have ever seen for kids about feelings. It is not preachy, it has no agenda. It is a great starting point to talk to kids and you can take it from there or rather let your kids guide you where they want to go, what they want to tell you about their feelings.