By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 1, 2011
Here’s the scoop on the most popular destinations on The Children’s Book Review site, the most coveted new releases and bestsellers.
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THE NEW RELEASES
The most coveted books that release this month:
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever
by Jeff Kinney
(Ages 8-11)
Inheritance
by Christopher Paolini
(Young Adult)
Home for Christmas
by Jan Brett
(Ages 0-5)
Ivy an Bean: No News is Good News
by Annie Barrows
(Ages 6-9)
Red Sled
by Lita Judge
(Ages 0-5)
Steps and Stones: An Anh’s Anger Story
by Gail Silver
(Ages 4-10)
THE BEST SELLERS
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By Phoebe Vreeland, The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 10, 2010
Anh’s Anger
by Gail Silver (Author), Christiane Krömer (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Plum Blossom Books (August 11, 2009)
Source: Publicist
What to expect: Anger management, Buddhist influence
We all know how challenging it can be to help a child deal with the powerful energy of anger. No matter how deep our reserves of compassion and patience are as parents, we also seek tools. In Anh’s Anger, author Gail Silver offers traditional Buddhist technique for dealing with the emotion.
The story is a simple one. A young boy is absorbed in play, content building a tower of blocks while his grandfather prepares their dinner. Ahn does not want to be interrupted. After ignoring several requests to come to dinner, the boy melts down. Unable to articulate his feelings, they quickly progress from tears to anger. Finally, he yells mean words at his grandfather. Wise and steady, Grandfather politely asks Ahn to go to his room and sit with his anger. There he is surprised by the presence of a colorful and mischievous creature—his anger brought to life. The two “play” till they tire, then sit and breathe together. Change transpires. Grandfather returns and invites an articulate and apologetic Ahn to dinner.
Illustrator Christiane Krömer blends silk and paper collage with brush and pencil drawings for great effect. She nicely depicts Ahn’s full range of emotion—contentment, tears, rage, surprise, remorse and serenity. Her choice of color and texture in the collage reinforce these emotions—watermarks echo Ahn’s tears and vibrant red and yellow dagger shapes amplify the boy’s rage.
Upon first reading, my Western mind started throwing out criticisms of why this might not work as magically in real life. So I decided to do a bit of adult reading on the subject of anger. Ahn’s Anger is published by Plum Blossom Books, the children’s imprint of Parallax Press that offers young people books on mindfulness and Buddhism. The book clearly offers an Eastern approach and draws from the wisdom of an expert on the matter: Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace-activist Thich Nhat Hanh.
Curiously, I found Hanh’s book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames in my own bookshelf. (“Hmmm, must be husband’s”, I murmur.) In it, Hahn instructs that the way we approach anger is to first accept responsibility for it and actually embrace it. “Your anger is not your enemy, your anger is your baby.” Our first task, he says, is to accept it as “a mother accepts her child.” Hahn views emotion as organic and there
