Picture Book Review: The Happy Book

This is a really fun feelings book. I enjoy the way each new “book” experience is related to what happened in the “book” before. That aspect makes it different from most of the feelings books I have read. It takes you through a range of emotions based on a single situation, each new discovery of feelings leading to a new feeling. It’s very clever.

There’s also some fun bits for the parents, which definitely go straight over my kid’s head, which is that there are a lot of nods to common expressions like “happy as a clam” and “happy camper” for example, which end up being just the kid and his clam friend’s names. It’s something kids might not be familiar with, but as an adult it makes me giggle a little at it. There’s kind of a cheesy pun thing going on almost.

The overall story also works really well as it shows how emotions work socially rather than in their own space. The Happy Book goes past the feeling identifier stories and starts showing that certain people’s feelings can affect the feelings of others. It’s a really good concept to be introducing right now to our threenager so she can understand, for example, why mommy got mad because Madeline was mad.

It’s an opportunity to show her that if she’s angry for not getting her way, it’s likely her mom is going to feed off that and have her own set of emotions that may not fit what she expects of me; aka “be nice to me mommy when I want a toy” is what she expects. “I’m not happy about you getting mad over not getting a toy” is what she gets instead. Now this book can help her visualize those connections and understand that how she projects her feelings or the things she says and does in relation to those feelings affects those around her.