For those who’ve been reading The SEN Resources Blog for a while now, you’ll probably remember me raving about a fantastic book for kids by Katie Flanagan called ‘What am I Feeling?‘(have a look at our review here). This book is a brilliant resource for helping children to not only understand their emotions but to be able to express them to others.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was very excited to discover that Katie Flanagan has now published the sequel to this book, to further develop children’s emotional literacy, it’s called What Else Am I Feeling?: Defining More Emotions and it’s great!

As the name suggests this book provides children with the vocabulary to explain even more emotions for example: frustration and guilt. And it does so in the same lovely warm, friendly, gentle way as the first book. On each double spread of the book it features an emotion and includes a drawing of a child feeling that way and an example of why.

What did we like about it?

• Further develops a child’s emotional literacy– Emotional literacy is so incredibly important and what I particularly loved about this book is how it increases a child’s vocabulary when they are talking or writing about emotions. Being able to accurately work out how you feel and tell others can be extremely difficult for so many children (and lets face it..adults). By talking through a whole array of different emotions in this book and by including visual representations of them alongside examples, you’re effectively arming children with the words they need to describe how they are feeling. This not only helps the child but it helps the adults who care for them to understand and support them better.

• Use as a visual aid to refer to– I love the idea that this book could be sat on your bookshelf at home or in a primary school classroom and that kids could use it either with a grown up or independently when they are feeling a certain emotion- to sort of ‘look it up’ so to speak, like a their very own emotions encyclopaedia! And when they find the right page with the right emotion on it, to be like ‘yes! That’s how I’m feeling right now!’ .

• Prompts discussions– From a personal point of view, with my own children, we certainly experienced this book prompting discussions about emotions. When we turned to each new page and read about that emotion and the example, they immediately wanted to talk about when they had felt that way and what had happened. It was really enlightening and such a positive experience.

• Beautiful illustrations– As with Katie Flanagan’s previous book, the illustrations are gorgeous. The colours and style of the pictures in the book perfectly compliment the warm, non intrusive voice of the book.

• Extra guidance– at the start of the book there’s a wonderful section about how to make the most of the book. It’s full of examples of questions to prompt discussions, word choices to use etc really helping you make the most of the book.

Find What Else Am I Feeling?: Defining More Emotions on Amazon here.