Glad Monster, Sad Monster

My son loves this book, and I think it helps a lot with his emotional intelligence. The masks come out and there is a pocket in the back to hold them in. Of course they still get left out and ripped up, though. But it's nice that they thought of the pocket. We tried very hard to keep them safe for a couple of weeks! My son and I will reference what color monster we feel like sometimes to help express our feelings. I can ask him what color monster he feels like when he seems a little overwhelmed with emotion, which helps him to stop and reflect on his feelings so we can better address the problem. It's also a little more meaningful when I tell him, for example, that I feel like the blue monster because he is jumping on me and it hurts. Also, and this was of his own design, he uses his "monster friends" to help protect him from his blinds. The tree outside his window sometimes scrapes his window, so he's afraid of his blinds. But he'll call his monster friends and/or lay their masks around his bed to help him feel safe. He prefers the green monster, to better scare off whatever is scaring him.

Believe it or not...this book helps control tantrums. Most kids between 2 and 4 don't have the vocabulary to express their feelings. This book teaches them the different emotions, and assigns a color to them. If my son starts to cry, instead of getting frustrated, I can ask him, "Are you a blue monter (the sad one) or a yellow monster (the glad one)? He'll say the blue monster. It's how we get kids to verbalize instead of tantrum. It's helped immensely. I wouldn't use the mask part though, cause kids sometimes don't understand that you are behind the mask and they think you've gone away. Also recommend "Go Away Big Scary Monster" by Emberly. Fantastic!!! On a side note...I will say that I've never been able to really use the fold out pages (that has eye holes for you to look through...so you can be one of the monsters)....the book's a bit unwieldy that way. But I just ignore that part of it and just read the book like I would any other. After the "mad monster" gets mad at a kid knocking down his blocks....I ask my son - What makes you mad? And then..."What makes you sad? - Happy?" - and so on. When you tell kids to stop yelling or throwing things (or whatever your kid might do to show frustration) sometimes they interpret it as, "We're not allowed to be angry." Which'll make them robots when they grow up. This book opens the discussion up for them.

There is no story to this book. It's just fun. It's colorful. It engages a kid with the shapes and faces. And its' just a fun book. If you're like me, any book that encourages a child to pick it up and turn every page until the end is a good book. Just because a book like this doesn't have a story, or a moral lesson to teach, doesn't mean it's not a good book. Kids like this book because it's fun and that makes it a winner! There is some educational value to it in that it talks about emotions (It shows different faces to match the monsters' emotions). That's good stuff, but it's not the strength of this book. The strength of this book is how much fun it is and how stimulating it is to a child's imagination.

My 2-year-old daughter loves this book to death! I ordered it because I wanted to add a few carefully chosen books about feelings to our home library. This one is neatly interactive in that in includes detachable pages with masks illustrating each feeling. There's also a handy pocket in the back to keep the masks stored, which is helpful. It features 2 pages for each "feeling" and bright almost neon illustrations of cute monsters that are exhibiting each feeling with companion text. There are pages for glad, angry, loving, sad, silly, and worried. I think I would opt to include a few more feelings if I had a choice - perhaps a page for disappointed. I think it has been a good addition to our library, even if I am now sick of reading the darn thing. My daughter loves it though and I think it's helping her understanding the new feelings she is having as she grows.

The preschool children love this book

The book itself is cute and nice for teaching kids about emotions. My only problem is the masks for each emotion, which are likely to get destroyed or lost and leave the pages with a jagged edge where they are ripped out of the book. My son pulls the masks out of the back storage folder and throws them around rather than wanting to read the book (unlike all other books we have that he wants me to read to him). Most likely I'll hide the masks and just have the book available.

What a fun book, includes masks to play with

I teach pre-K through 5th as an art teacher. I use this book to help students percive and understand how artists use shapes to convey emotions in portraiture. Students connect well to the feelings described, and relate them to their own experience. My students love looking though the book by themselves and with friends. They get a kick out of the paper masks included in the book and delight in trying them on. Luckily the book is made of sturdy paper stock; even so, I accept that after a certain number of years I will replace the current copy with a new one. It is worth it!