This is the first book to start off a great series called Bella & Bird The Emotion Explorers. In this book, Henry comes into the pasture feeling angry. Bella, who is wise, and Bird, who is a little silly, work together together to help Henry understand his feelings. They help him to see why he feels that way and how those things make him feel. Then together they discover many different ways to understand and him learn to calm his feelings.

I really liked this story and how it helps my little ones handle anger and many other feelings like it. Wonderful illustrations keep the story calm and easy to follow. Our favorite is how we can learn to be calm & breathe. It even helped me. This book is o for all families and to share in the classroom. I truly give high praise & love to this book and love to share it. Experience the story with your little ones.

Thank you NetGalley and Dr. Deana Plakson for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Love the concept of this book. I am a high school teacher with young children. I see even older teenagers really struggle to control emotions, and the strategies in this book resonate very strongly with techniques we use in our classrooms. The box breathing chart and counting techniques are really great, and I am excited for the children who will learn from this book. I could see it being used in early childhood classes when teaching students about handling emotions.

My toddlers are a bit too young for this one for now so I read it alone, but in the future it will be a great read for them.

This book is a wonderful way of explaining emotion on their level. My daughter has epilepsy and adhd. This can lead to big emotions, quickly. She is a horse lover so when I found a book about emotions and horses, I immediately requested the arc. I’m so glad I did. She loved it, and while we read we practiced the box breathing and counting. I loved that there was a visual explanation along with a the emotion wheel. I saw the author plans to make more books including bird and Bella, and we will absolutely be purchasing those! I also will be recommending this series to her therapist! So many young children who benefit from reading about emotions. My daughter is 7 1/2 and enjoyed this story.

I highly recommend this thoughtful book on anger management and understanding why feelings occur and how to handle them. This is a simple story of a boy and his animal friends who help him manage his feelings. But it also gives an objective look at an argument and why events occurred as they did. Sometimes children are too egocentric to understand their caregiver's POV when handling a situation. Reading a book about why an adult chose the punishment they did, and how the child calmed down can help children understand.

I recommend this book for schools and libraries.

I found this book wonderful. Talking about emotions is often difficult, especially if they are what everyone calls "negative" emotions, this book helps to deal with them in the right way and offers children simple methods that are within their reach. I will definitely read it to my students, they will love it! We could also do an activity on the various emotions and this book will definitely help us!

Conceptually this book is great. I think there's too much text on a page for younger viewers, but it's not sophisticated enough messaging for the 8-10 range. The vocabulary is also quite basic and wouldn't challenge an older child.
That being said, it's a helpful resource for children on how to deal with emotional outbursts and reinforces the importance of taking time out prior to reacting (something we could all do with a lot more).
I suppose one thing that struck me was, what message will a child take away from this book? Given there is much content and little time expanded on each, it might be better presented as a series of shorter, more accessible stories to introduce each topic or technique gradually. This would also allow for increased character development and perhaps explain the relationship between the three characters which hasn't been fully developed in an engaging way.

This was a very useful and informative book for kids of a limited age range, I would say between 4-6. It wasn’t as whimsical and entertaining as it could have been, so it may not hold littles’ attention super well, but it does give a way for librarians, teachers and parents to present this important information in a more palatable way that is easily understood by small kids. I think any older than 1st grade and they would look at me like why are we reading this little kid stuff. But that’s just my students- perhaps yours know how to still be children past 6 years of age🙃 The illustrations were professional and charming and in great colors that weren’t irritatingly primary like some kids books can have. And the technique illustrations were a nice bonus. All in all, if I had a chance to purchase this for my library I would, and would read it every year.

I think that this is a great book to help teach kids how to effectively navigate and cope with anger, however I will say that this book was longer and went into some depth. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of when the target audience is younger.
The first thing that I want to applaud is the super simple skills that the author included within the story. These two different breathing techniques are so easy to do whenever someone is feeling angry, which is absolutely perfect for little ones to have in their toolboxes.
Lastly, I want to give so much credit to the illustrator for showing such attention to detail, as it really brought the book from great to amazing. It was clear that the author and illustrator worked together well to make such an awesome book that will surely be helpful to many kids out there. Bravo!!