What's The Big Idea?: Why Am I Jealous?

Not bad- a lively and focused book aimed at young children and obviously part of a series designed to address a range of emotional issues kids face early on in primary school. I was a bit sceptical at first, books like this can be a bit overbearing and overly PC which ends up diluting their message but I think the balance is about right here. An accessible, sensible and nicely illustrated book that tackles a difficult subject reasonably well.

I thought this book might be helpful for my 3 and 6 year-olds, to aid them in developing more self-awareness about emotions such as jealousy, and how to handle them.Having read it, I'm not even going to show it to them.The story flits from one scene to another in a completely incoherent fashion: first it's playtime in a white room with white cubes lying around; then we're in a forest; then suddenly we're at a roller-coaster, with no explanation at all for the changes of scene. The characters have bizarre names, but aren't introduced at all.Half-way through, we find Yeti and Little Ballerina on a rollercoaster. "They can't seem to stop...". But why can't they stop? And why do they want to stop? Is this a metaphor for emotions? If so, who is the Ringmaster? What does it mean? None of it makes any sense at all.The writing is quite poor, both stylistically and grammatically. The sentences are too short (like this one!). Exclamation marks litter every page (like this!). Reported speech isn't punctuated correctly. Semi-colons are used where there should be colons. I could go on.But I could overlook all these niggles, if the book provided some helpful insights into dealing with feelings of jealousy. Unfortunately, it doesn't. These are the insights it offers, such as they are:(i) "Maybe, the best way to stop feeling bad feelings is to not let them take you for a ride...";(ii) "to get rid of jealousy there's nothing like moving on and having a good time with a friend"; and(iii) trying to smash into your friends (on a rollercoaster), while green with envy, "was a lot of fun after all!".I struggled to understand the meaning of the first point; my children certainly wouldn't make sense of it. The second point begs the question of how to move on and have a good time, when you are consumed with jealousy, which is the very question I thought the book set out to answer. And the last point is the reason that I won't even let my children see this book: I am shocked that the book seemingly endorses violence as a way of dealing with envy (or at least, doesn't condemn it).Finally, the illustrations: these are full-page, computer-generated images of bizarre characters with enormous heads. I suppose this allows us to read their emotions better, but they look very odd to me. If I were to find some redeeming feature, it is that the drawings are, at least, quite colourful.