Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, Everyone!
With Valentines Day on the horizon (and the Valentiny Contest fast approaching!) I thought today was a good day for this lovely book about feelings!
Title: In My Heart: A Book Of Feelings
Written By: Jo Witek
Illustrated By: Christine Roussey
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed, October 2014, informational fiction
Suitable For Ages: 2-4 (but I think up to 6 would like!)
Themes/Topics: emotions
Opening: “My heart is full of feelings. Big feelings and small feelings. Loud feelings and quiet feelings. Quick feelings and slow feelings. My heart is like a house, with all these feelings living inside.“
Brief Synopsis: Happiness, sadness, bravery, anger, shyness . . . hearts can feel so many things! Some make us feel as light as a balloon, others as heavy as an elephant. How does your heart feel?
Links To Resources: make a collage of different colored hearts to represent your emotions/how you feel; draw a picture of what happy, sad, angry, brave, hopeful, shy, or any other emotion looks like to you; write a haiku or poem about being happy, sad, angry, brave, hopeful, shy, or any other emotion; make heart cookies (recipe HERE) and color the icing so you have a rainbow of emotions!
Why I Like This Book: Emotions can be tricky even for adults. For kids, who have less experience of the world and a harder time understanding and articulating emotion, it’s wonderful to have a book like this that describes and shows the feel and the look of different basic emotions. The words are lovely, describing how different emotions feel in lyrical and accessible language (e.g. “Sometimes my heart feels as heavy as an elephant. There’s a dark cloud over my head, and tears fall like rain. This is when my heart is sad.“) And the art enhances the words by showing even further what the emotion looks like. The book is beautifully done, with heart cut-outs that run through the center of the book growing smaller on each page, and I think would be an asset to any library! 😊
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do 😊
For the complete list of books with resources, please visit Perfect Picture Books.
PPBF folks, please add your titles and post-specific blog links (and any other info you feel like filling out 😊) to the form below so we can all come see what fabulous picture books you’ve chosen to share this week!
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! 😊
Susanna Leonard Hill 
What a great book. I love the example of a heart as heavy as an elephant. I haven’t seen this one before and I look forward to finding it. Thank you, Susanna.
What a perfect choice for this emotion-filled month!
This sounds like an appealing book for children and it could provide an opportunity for them to think about their feelings.
Beautiful choice today Susanna. Must look for this one.
Oh, I love the collage-hearts idea! A great pick for this coming week, and for the entire year/
I think I need this picture book. 🙂
The book is needed by a number of adults I know who have a rough time recognizing and articulating emotions too! Great choice, and good luck to all the participants in the contest!
What a beautiful picture book! I love the vivid imagery for children. Emotions are a powerful thing. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I LOVE that cover! I can think of more than a few people who could benefit from this book, and they’re not children. Social/emotional skills are so important to learn as a child, and too often kids miss out on them. Thank you for a beautiful and important recommendation, Susanna.
Oh my goodness…what a beautiful book! Thanks for always providing us with this amazing platform, Susanna.
Fantastic! Love, love, love the illustrations, and especially love the nurse bandaging the heart. The emotions – just what we need for kids. Great book!
I love this book idea, and the illustrations connecting the feelings. Perfect timing for Valentine’s Day.
What a Perfect choice for Perfect Picture Book Friday! I’m going to add this book to my wish list! 🙂