Infants/toddlers:
Making Faces: A First Book of Emotions by Abrams Appleseed
Baby faces by Margaret Miller
Baby faces by DK
Lots of feelings Shelley Rotner
In my heart: A book of feelings by Jo Witek
I love how the introduction says "My heart is like a house with so many feelings living inside", because it's easy for a child to understand. Then each page has a different emotion: happy, brave, mad, calm, broken hearted, sad, hopeful, afraid, silly, shy and proud.
It's important to understand all emotions, and the author has described them very well. But even broken hearted doesn't make the book sad! It says we need extra kisses! The order of the emotions is perfect and it ends happily.
This is a great book that not just talks about various feelings but also expressed them with imagination, for example, in the sad feeling page, it says "Some days my heart feels as heavy as an elephant. There's a dark cloud over my head, and tears fall like rain. This is when my heart is sad."
I also like the design of this book has cut out hearts on each page to add a fun element and to mean our hearts can full of different feelings
Preschoolers and older children:
- Usborne All About Feelings by Felicity Brooks
It teaches them how to recognize facial and body clues to determine how someone is feeling and gives suggestions for helping others. It helps kids recognize their own emotions and coping strategies for themselves. Many of the pages have interactive and fun questions, like matching the emotion to the facial expression. Emotional intelligence and empathy are traits I want to help them develop and this book is a great resource.
- Feelings by Aliki
Yes, the kids in this book express actual feelings: Jealousy, sadness, rage, impatience. They feel them, they acknowledge them, the little birds comment on them. This isn't a book of simple feelings "happy, sad, angry, scared." This is a book of very real, nuanced human feelings and even if we wish we didn't have them (or our kids didn't), it seems like most of us do. While the feelings are a bit nuanced, the book is very clear and simple. I can see where people may think it's a great book for little kids (and it probably is), but I read it with my older kids (9&12), or they look at it themselves, and it's a great acknowledgement of real feelings as well as a great discussion starter. We really love this book, but if you are looking for something more clear-cut as an entry point to feelings language,
Chinese version of this book can be found in the 我会沟通，我有感觉，我懂礼貌 Communication, Feelings and Manners book set, on My Story Treasury which ships internationally.
- The Boy with Big, Big Feelings (The Big, Big) by Britney Winn Lee
Perfect for children who can feel deeply and are sensitive to others' and their own emotions.
This book addresses what it’s like to have emotions of all kinds and how they sometimes show up physically in your body. The little boy takes on other people’s emotions and even holds onto all the beautiful emotions and thoughts/images “for hours”. He feels so different and alone until he sees a little girl just like him with her big emotions and together they see everyone feels them.
I like that the protagonist is a boy, reinforcing that boys have and can show their true feelings too.
- B is for Breathe
From the letter A to the letter Z, B is for Breathe celebrates the many ways children can express their feelings and develop coping skills at an early age
Not only will your children learn different methods of coping with their emotions, they'll learn a resourceful array of vocabulary to go along with learning the alphabet.
Great diverse pictures too.
- 我的感觉 My Feelings - Bilingual (Set of 8)
- 菲力的17种情绪 Philip's 17 Emotions
