Walter Was Worried

This was a very simple, short book that describes feelings of different children over the course of a thunderstorm. It begins with “the sky grew dark,” and the illustrations show a kite falling down and a dark sky. I liked how when the author set the scene of the storm, no faces were present on the pages, only what the storm was doing to the outside environment. The next page showed faces of children like “Walter was worried,” “Shirley was shocked,” and so on. I also liked how the text for words like “shocked” and “puzzled” are bolded, clarifying that those words are adjectives of what feelings look like on someone’s face. This also gave the story a more dramatic tone, as the story goes through all of the different show more emotions. Cool fonts are used for things like “puzzled” shows a puzzled face on the second page. I liked how the illustrations coincided perfectly with the story, and how the illustrator used letters from the feeling words to fill in facial features of the children, like “Frederick was frightened” and his eyes are e’s, and Deliah was delighted: eyes are made out of d’s and e’s. show less

In this simple-unique book, Laura Seeger perfectly mixes word art and simple text to introduce the story of children's different reactions to a storm. This book shows how the weather changes from dark clouds to thunder, then the rain turned to snow and, finally, the sun came out. Each time the weather changes, little children emotionally affected by that changing. The young children’s emotions are literally spelled out on their faces. For example, (Walter was worried; Priscilla was puzzled; Shirley was shocked, Ursula was upset) the illustrator used the letters in the word to make up the children's faces and their facial expression. For instance, the word “Upset” was used to make up Ursula’s facial expression. So the letter U in show more the word “U-p-s-e-t” turned upside down to become Ursula’ moth to show how sad face looks like. The author uses the next two pages to explain what was making the child feel that way. This interesting story goes on like this with each child's feeling and why they were feeling that way. I really liked how the illustrator used feeling words to create facial features of the children, and also use different names that match the words too like “Frederick was frightened, ” and Deliah was delighted. The author also draws a picture of herself on the page about the author by using the letters of her name “L-a-u-r-a.” She uses the Letter “L” and “r” as her nose and the two “aa” as her eyes, and a big “U” as her smiley moth. Even though there is only one sentence on each page, but that does not limit the deep value of wonderful cooperation of art and story. When I finished reading the story with my daughter, we created our faces’ expression after reading this book by using the letters in our names. It was such a fun activity. show less

This is a great learning tool for kids! I think it would be awesome in introducing letters to kids! the illustrations are adorable and on every page, the name and the adjective used to describe that person begin with the same letter. The word that they choose is also hidden among the faces of the children on each page, which is also super cool! Definitely going to be marking this one to use in my classroom in the future!

This is a simple book that does a good job of taking the audience through different emotions/feelings. The illustrations are easy for the students to name from looking at the facial features. This is a good book to use during a unit on feelings to generate conversations about different feelings.

The text was nothing super special, with simple plot lines and emotions following a storm. However, I really enjoyed the bright use of color that the illustrator uses here. I also like how she uses letters to convey emotions on the children's faces throughout the book and shakes up the layout here and there. Great book for younger children.

I was surprised and amused by the front cover which only had a painting of a boy with a worried expression on his face and on my search for the title I come to find that and the author's name on the back cover. It was definitely a first time seeing this style. I enjoyed how the illustrator included the letters of the person's emotions on the face itself as eyes, a nose, mouth, eyebrows, etc. Lots of different font styles too!

This wonderfully painted picture book tells of many little children emotionally affected by the changing weather. All of the emotions are alliterations with the children's names. (Walter was worried, Priscilla was puzzled, Delilah was delighted, etc.). The best part of the book is its design. On the left, we have the statement. (Delilah was delighted). On the right page, a painting of Delilah. The letters of the emotion (d-e-l-i-g-h-t-e-d) are used to make up the facial features! Even cooler, is that however they are artfully used in the illustration, they are replicated in shape & color on the left page's text. A very sweet book.