Whitney Stewart

This is a book that teaches middle graders about mindfulness meditation. I've heard about mindfulness for a long time but never really understood exactly what it is. So I was trying to figure out what it is and whether there are any exercises useful in helping angry children calm down. Because the book is targeted at middle grades, the language is easy to read and the examples are easy to understand. There are illustrations here and there. The book provides many meditation activities that show more encourage imagination toward a magical, fantasy world, which really appealed to my daughter who loves to read fantasy stories. She also enjoyed the short, simple personality quizzes that occasionally popped up.

I think the language the book used to explain mindfulness is still a little confusing. It all sounds nice to hear, but when I actually put those explanation side by side with the activities they listed, they don't always match up. Based on the activities in the book, I understand mindfulness as a combination of three types of meditation: 1) Making your brain become super aware of how your behaves when you're breathing in and out. You need to be super focused and think of nothing but the breath. 2) Imagining and visualizing magical things like fire balls, colorful lights, or clouds, and linking these imageries to feelings you want to remove (e.g. imagine clouds that represent your different anxieties vanish in the sky) or increase (e.g. imagine you and everyone else in the world are engulfed by the light of kindness, or perseverance, or some other positive quality.) 3) Paying close attention to nature and how nature changes, and associating these changes with positive feelings, so as to help you not feel sad about changes in life.

I think the rationale behind 1) is to unplug your brain from whatever you're caught up with in the moment, because you're asked to totally stop thinking about anything else but your breath. It likely works very well. I have since asked both my kids, when they are stuck in a state of meltdown, or struggling over and over with the section of a piano piece, to take three mindfulness breaths. I think it will probably work just as well if you change the focus from "breath" to other things, as long as you are still really focused on that thing. For example, I understand Christians who meditate tend to focus on a short Scripture verse. I think 2) points to the fact, established by scientists and psychologists, that the human brain is more susceptible to what we choose to imagine than we think. In this case, I would want to imagine things that are close to God's truth in the spiritual realm. The value 3) is promoting resonate a lot with Buddhism. But I think the reason we get sad about things changing is because humans by nature seek eternity. It's what God has placed in our hearts. So I am leery of attempts to mold the brain to not feel bad about any type of change.

The book talks repeatedly about how when you unplug yourself from your thoughts and focus on your breath, you will gaze upon your "WISDOM MIND" (in all caps, LOL) and that WISDOM MIND will show you to think, feel, and behave wisely. I don't think unplugging has that much power, other than calming you down :P The Holy Spirit needs to move in the person, otherwise no one can help thinking, feeling or acting foolishly. show less

I absolutely loved this book for a couple of reasons. I found the writing extremely engaging and interesting, and a little humorous too. For example, the author tells us the time that Walt Disney painted pictures on the white house he lived in with black tar. The characters, Walt Disney himself, were extremely believable. Children can relate to him when the author said that he lived on a farm for most of his childhood. Those who live on a farm can relate to all of the happiness and show more excitement that Walt Disney experienced when he lived on this farm. The big idea of this story is to give the reader a background of Walt Disney and how the small town that he lived in can been seen in the layout of Disney World. show less

It's hard to judge a book like this, as it seems to be written for children. As I'm not children anymore, I'm clearly not the intended target for the book. I appreciate that the book doesn't completely sugarcoat the flaws of Walt Disney, but it does take some odd detours and includes some details that seem slightly irreverent. Also, do kids today want to read about Walt Disney? Do they even know who he is?

I think this is a cute, little, useful book for middle grade kids. I agree with the review that kids won't read this cover to cover, and it might be more suited to a parent or teacher to go over some activities with it's intended audience. Although, there are some mature middle grade readers out there who might pick this up on their own and try the activities. Goodness knows our kids are overscheduled, overworked and overwhelmed these days. A little mindfulness may help.