Book of the Month: The Worry (Less) Book: Feel Strong, Find Calm, and Tame Your Anxiety

 

For February's Book of the Month, I chose a nonfiction children's book about worry and anxiety to help children who might be having trouble with our new normal because of Covid-19 or those that like me, tend to having worry and anxious tendencies. The Worry (Less) Book: Feel Strong, Find Calm, and Tame Your Anxiety! by Rachel Brian is our Book of the Month. I read a lot of self-help nonfiction for adults on worry and anxiety and wanted to see what we have out there for our children to read on the subject. 

Summary: Start worrying less and enjoying life with this book for people who worry or struggle with anxiety (so yeah--everyone)!

Ages: 6-10 years

"What this book can do: explain how your body reacts to worries. Help you recognize anxiety. Give you ideas for calming yourself. What it can't do: tell you how to worry. Pick up your dirty socks. Make all anxiety disappear."

In kid-friendly speak and fun comic illustrations, Rachel Brian presents a helpful book on worry and anxiety for children and like she says, "for everyone!" Particularly helpful is how she presents ways middle graders and adults can manage their stressful moments and how to understand their feelings better. This is a great book to explain worry to children and how there are good worries and being overly worried. 

The pictures really get emotions across that will help the reader understand even better. There's also valuable information explaining worry from a scientific and medical perspective. I also liked how the author pointed out the different ways you can recognize it's anxiety and how anxiety can get in the way of new opportunities and all the ways you can take care of you to avoid worry's ugly moments. 

This book is a great introduction on worry and how to alleviate them. 

Book of the Month: Ruby Finds a Worry

Ruby Finds A Worry by Tom Percival is November's Book of the Month. Percival delivers a helpful picture book on the subject of worry using cutie-pie Ruby and her yellowy, squibbly worry that just won't seem to go away.

Summary: Meet Ruby--a happy, curious, imaginative girl. But one day, she finds something unexpected: a Worry. It's not a very big Worry, at first. But every day, it grows a little bigger...and a little bigger...until eventually the Worry is enormous and is all she can think about. 

Ages: Preschool to age 2

"Ruby didn't realize it, but she was doing the worst thing you can ever do with a Worry: she was worrying about it!"

 I enjoy picking up picture books that have emotional themes such as this one and see what their message is on how to handle them. Ruby Finds a Worry offers sound advice in a kid-friendly way on the subject of worrying. 

The illustrations of a yellow scribble dot and the expressions on Ruby's face add understanding to the story.

This book would be great to read right now with so much worries in the world, but would also be a great lesson for a little one who has even the smallest worry to deal with.