I got this book for my kids: I Want A Popsicle!: A Story About Dealing With Anger. My son likes it a lot. Here's my review of it.
---
It's a book for Asian children about feelings
The author's website says, "We are on a mission to provide bilingual resources for Asian American families to explore and understand emotions." Currently, Asian characters are underrepresented in English-language books for children. And also, I've heard Asian American people say that their parents didn't really talk to them about feelings- and even in China, I've met Chinese people who said they find it more natural to talk about feelings in English, because they've had more exposure to it in English, and their parents didn't really talk with them about it much in Chinese. (This would apply to Chinese people who have significant English-language influences in their lives. Not the average Chinese person.)
I am a white lady so I don't have direct experience with this myself, but I really wanted to get this book for my kids because they are mixed-race white + Chinese.
So that's where this book is coming from- trying to address this gap. It's a book about anger, where the characters in the story are Asian. And also, the book is bilingual, available in several editions: English + simplified Chinese, English + traditional Chinese, English + Cantonese, English + Korean, and English only. (We have the English + simplified Chinese version, because mainland China uses simplified Chinese. This version also has pinyin, which indicates the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Mandarin.)
---
The plot
The little girl in the story sees an ice cream truck, and she really wants a popsicle, but her parents say no, she should wait until dinner time. She is really mad about this. Her parents help her manage her emotions- take deep breaths to calm down, talk about how she feels, etc. They tell her it's okay to cry, and everyone gets mad sometimes, and they love her no matter what feelings she has. In the end (spoilers) she has a popsicle at home after eating her dinner.
---
My son's opinion
My son really likes this book. I asked him why he likes it, and it turns out it's because he finds it very relatable. Sometimes he really wants a popsicle. ("Or ice cream," he added, helpfully.)
(Oh okay, I just read it to him again, and I asked, "Do you like it because of the popsicle, or because it's about taking care of your feelings?" and he said "taking care of my feelings" but probably he just said that because I made such a big deal out of it.)
I'm not sure how much he really *gets* the message about feelings, but I always tell him it's okay to be angry sometimes, or cry sometimes, and the important thing is we can make choices about what to do with our feelings. So that's good for him.
---
Related:
Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)
No comments:
Post a Comment