I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest, I expected more from this based on the title and the cover. The pictures were fun but the story was flat. I think kids would probably like it and it does have a good lesson about calming yourself.

A picture book with a suitable moral, well expressed, of how to defuse a petty argument, but one that could have been better. Just take the first lines of text – our characters "are all good friends. They all lived together on a kitchen table in the kitchen". Now (a) where else is a kitchen table supposed to be, and (b) can we settle on a past or present tense, please? (Which is a question I often have to demand of myself when I look back at my reviews, so this really is pot/kettle/black time, I know, but I'm not between two permanent covers waiting for people to pay to read me.) Beyond that we get the ridiculous spat, and the way out of the problems it causes, which looks a bit cannibalistic in this scenario but we'll let that slide. A family-friendly recipe and colouring-in pages close out to make us feel better about the opening lines, which all told are about the only flaws in this read. So I was left not wishing failure on this book, whatsoever, but with the feeling I'd been forced to point out how it doesn't give itself the greatest chance at success at times.

It's a simple story about stress management. I love that it's short and sweet, and I think it'd be very easy for young readers to understand. I'm not a big fan of the illustration style, though. And lastly, perhaps it could've ended less abruptly.

This had a sweet message about stress management for children and was well illustrated. I felt like the positive messaging could have been celebrated further. It felt like the book ended abruptly and spent most of its time in the “grumpy” phase.