However, I wonder how useful this colour allocation is, as some children might have a favourite colour associated with a negative emotion. Children who are particularly struggling could simply assign themselves a colour for their feeling. The format of the book allows for a conversation with children about managing their feelings 'putting them into bottles' and discussing why they might be feeling a particular emotion.Īs a group, we discussed the interesting allocation of colour to the different emotions. Indeed, on the final page the story doesn't explicitly spell out how the monster feels so children can have fun guessing and questioning what it 'feels' like to be in love! When I read this together with a group of friends, we had a lengthy discussion before we even opened the book about whether there were four monsters or one with different personalities, and therefore able to begin to make predictions about what might happen. This book is engaging from the very front cover, and this only increases with the pop up element. So I think this book does a disservice to children more than teaching them anything about emotions. While that is one way to feel sadness, there are so many others ways to be sad, and so many other behaviors to express sadness. When you're sad, you hide and want to be alone. This book goes so far as to tell children how to experience certain emotions: Telling children that blue is sadness will confuse children who experience blue as tranquility, or power, or curiosity, or any number of other emotions.
furthermore, labeling emotions with specific colors doesn't work as a one-size-fits-all solution, since color is a very personal experience people feel very differently about the same color. While it is vital to teach children to identify their emotions, it is just as important to help them understand that it is normal to feel more than one single emotion at a time, even about the same thing/person/idea.
Love the collage-y illustrations of this picture book, but the text has some troubling issues.
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