Glad Monster, Sad Monster

One of our favoritest (Yes, that is a word. Why? Because I say it is) books in the whole wide world is Glad Mon­ster, Sad Mon­ster: A Book About Feel­ings. It’s by Ed Ember­ley & Anne Miranda. We were intro­duced to it through the preschool the chil­dren have attended. The preschool uses it as part of their feel­ings sec­tion & the kids LOVE it. Each child has their own favoritest mon­ster, well except for D-man. He has a lit­eral taste for all the mon­sters. Seri­ously, the kid will try to eat anything.

Mr. J’s…Glad Monster.

Mr. G’s…Silly Monster.

Mamacita’s…Loving Mon­ster.

You can hold the mon­ster faces up to your own & use them as a way to talk about what you are feel­ing or what makes you feel wor­ried or angry (it cov­ers these too). The kids think it’s freak­ing hilar­i­ous to see Mommy or Daddy or any­one for that mat­ter put on the mon­ster face. Well, actu­ally I would hope NOT just any­one. I mean if it was the mail­man enter­tain­ing my kids then I’d won­der why the heck was the mail­man using our book & why was he enter­tain­ing my kids…wait where was I?

Oh yah, the book.

You can also have the kid­dos cre­ate their own feel­ings mon­sters. But no fair ask­ing lit­tle Timmy why he wants to be an angry mon­ster who destroys his sister’s toys & doesn’t he want to be a happy mon­ster who loves but­ter­flies. Because it’s about them learn­ing to express feel­ings in a healthy way. Not like a lot of us adults who express them by eat­ing a car­ton of ice cream or yelling at strangers while dri­ving.  I mean really they should know NOT to be in the fast lane if they’re only going to drive 50 miles an hour. It’s a 70 mile an hour zone! Move it OR Lose it.

Hmm…It might be time for me to make my own feel­ings monster.

Tagged as: book, ed emberley, family, kids, monsters, reading