Big Feelings

The illustrations in this are fantastic, full of energy and kids reflecting diverse cultures, religions, races, and abilities. They aptly depict some strategies for dealing with overwhelming emotions and the situations that provoke them: communication, compromise, collaboration, seeing things from another perspective.

The text struggles to hold its own against such expressive images at times, but Big Feelings still offers parents, teachers, and librarians ample opportunities to help children connect to the insights offered by the words, the illustrations, or both taken together.

"I have big feelings.
You have them, too.
How can I help?
What can we do?"

A large group of diverse children (different skin colors and religions - Muslim, Jewish, Sikh - and abilities - one wheelchair user and some glasses-wearers) gather in a green space with ideas for building something. Some of them clash, and then a storm ruins some of what they've made, but they figure out a Plan B (or maybe it's Plan C by this point) and work together to make it happen. Simple rhyming texts repeats and models what to do when Big Feelings arise.

"This is our world.
This is our home.
Whatever we're feeling,
we're never alone."

See also: I Feel Teal by Lauren Rille

For a book called Big Feelings, there is a decided LACK of them. Everything is ambivalent in nature, glossed over.....I wanted more. We need to talk emotions and feelings more and this book doesn't cut it

‘Big Feelings’ is the follow-up book to ‘All Are Welcome’ (AAW) by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman. This book is intended to help children navigate the emotional challenges they face in their daily lives. This book was released during the emotionally charged days of Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and COVID-19 isolations. The book seeks to recognize the excited feelings of anticipation, the disappointments of failure, the disagreements with friends, before coming together for a different point of view, i.e., finding a different solution.

This book has much fewer text than AAW and relies heavily on the illustrations to tell the story. Both its story and text are quite simplistic. The strong emotions are lightly touched show more via text as each page turned, quickly revealing the next set of feelings. I’m afraid it didn’t deliver as powerfully as AAW didn’t. This book should work for the much younger ages such as pre-school as an introduction to identify the different types of feelings a child may have. Having the right word to express the inner tug-of-war in a little one is a reasonable starting point.

Same as AAW, the kids in this book represent every variety of ethnicity and religious background, which I greatly appreciate. show less

I love feelings books, and i want to always create conversations in the classroom around mental health and how we are feeling. I think the emotions and characters in this book are extremely relatable and its a great read.

The characters are the same from one of my all time favorites: “All Are Welcome”. Few words but good message. I would expand on it and ask follow-up questions but it’s a great book to open discussions and full of diverse characters.

This book is about how kids can make a difference. It shows other points of view, making alternative plans, and strengthening friendships that can help navigate the human experience.