All Kinds of Feelings

“Notes for teachers, parents, and caregivers”, a closing section in All Kinds of Feelings, explains the book’s purpose:

This book aims to encourage children to talk about their feelings, recognize and value a range of emotions in themselves and those around them, and develop empathy for the way other people may be feeling. The text and images are designed as prompts for discussion, either at home with a parent or caregiver, or in a classroom setting.

All Kinds of Feelings is one of four books in the “All Kinds of People” series originally published in 2019 by Franklin Watts in England. Unlike most Crabtree books, the books in this series do not use full-colour photos. Instead, the books contain cartoon-like art that has been rendered by Ayesha Rubio & Jenny Palmer, with the exception being this title which credits only Ayesha Rubio. The artwork portraying the children and adults is remarkably inclusive and captures the spectrum of differences while supporting the text superbly.

The books in the series employ a form of dual text wherein the main text is delivered via third person while speech bubbles containing bolded text are used to provide first person “child” examples of the points being made by the main text. For example, when the main text talks about how feelings can change, the text reads:

The way we feel may change many times throughout the day.

Rubio’s illustrations then offer three scenarios showing how one little girl’s feelings changed over the day of her birthday. In the first scene, the little girl is jumping on her bed, and her speech bubble reads, “It’s my birthday and I feel excited.” The next illustration finds her seated on some stairs and looking at a clock, with her bubble containing, “I feel impatient. When’s the party going to start?” The last image reveals the girl peeking out the front door as two of her guests arrive. The accompanying bubble reads, “Now I feel shy.”

Though All Kinds of Feelings has a Table of Contents with the chapters having titles, such as “Feeling angry” and “Being sorry”, these titles are not repeated within the book. A few words within the two texts are highlighted, and these words are defined in “Useful Words” which shares the last page with an index. “Notes for teachers, parents, and caregivers”, which appears on the volume’s penultimate pair of pages, offers adults five “additional activities that support and expand on the scenarios shown in the book.”

Whereas the other three books in the “All Kinds of People” series contained a lot of hard facts, the contents of All Kinds of Feelings are concerned with learnings related to the affective domain.