“Your book is incredible, the most surprising of all is that I also related to the book! It’s rare for a children’s book to be able to connect to adults as well (it reminds me of how I connect to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)! You captured their feelings through their body language and facial expressions flawlessly! As an Early Childhood Educator I was impressed that you were able to show characters that look like feelings, I would focus on fostering social and emotional growth in my classrooms on a daily basis to set the foundation for the children as they grow. Often times feelings can be too abstract for the children to understand. The fine detail to the story and illustrations in this book truly connect to children and adults to feel understood and open their minds to allow creativity to flow.
I attached a photo of my favorite page to tell you this story. When I began teaching I had set up a table to make snowmen pictures with the children. They were cutting the circles and gluing the pieces in place. One child did his snowman differently than the others. The other children were placing and glueing the circles in a row on the paper to resemble a snowman. This child stacked the circles on top of each other, it looked like a snowman with one snowball. I told him how lovely his snowman was and began asking questions to see if he could verbalize why he chose to make his that way. He told me (he was almost 3 years old), “because that’s how you build a snowman.” And he was absolutely right! When you build a snowman outside you stack them on top of each other! His dad came and I showed him his sons photo on the bulletin board, his dad chuckled and thought his son didn’t understand the concept. And then I told his dad that his sons was my favorite, and showed him why. That moment I will always share with others because the natural creativity in children needs to be fostered and encouraged.”
~Kimberly Bass
