Book Review: The Happy Book - Understanding and Regulating Feelings




Author/Illustrator: Andy Rash

From the Book Jacket: When you live in The Happy Book, the world is full of daisies and sunshine and friendship cakes...until your best friend eats the whole cake and doesn't save you one bite. Moving from happiness to sadness and everything in between, Camper and Clam have a hard time finding their way back to happy. But maybe happy isn't the goal - being a good friend is about supporting each other and feeling all the feels together. 

At once funny and thoughtful, The Happy Book supports social emotional learning. It's a book to keep young readers company no matter how they're feeling!

Why It's On My Bookshelf: As a school counselor I have used a lot of different books to teach students how to regulate their feelings. The Happy Book is a great addition to my social emotional teaching curriculum. I specifically used this book to help kids learn more about the Zones of Regulation and how we can have many feelings throughout the day. Everything is going great between Camper and Clam until one of them gets their feelings hurt. From there they experience all sorts of different emotions. This was helpful to my students as they could connect to the conflict between the two characters - which was a misunderstanding. But more importantly how you can bounce right out of being happy into sadness or anger. At one point Camper feels scared that Clam no longer wants to be his friend. This is a social situation many kids can relate to. This book was a great fit for teaching the zones and also such a validating read for children to know it's okay to open up about your emotions -- eventually closure will come. 

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