This book is all about the different moods that a person has and is showed through a child. The little girl in the story has different things going on in her life and each new thing gives her a different emotion. These emotions are felt by everyone at some point or another and are great to be discussed in the classroom to let children know that emotions are a normal part of life. 

After reading this story, the teacher could make a chart and ask students to write down things that make them feel a certain way and record it on the chart so that students can see that different things make people feel different ways. The most important part of this story is to show that not everyone reacts the same way to the same situation. Everyone is different and each person should be accepted. 

Grade K-2

Book Level: 

Lexile AD250L

Accelerated Reader 2.4

Tree Therapy

Most days I get ahead of the morning. I’m up and busy with the mindless tasks that paradoxically fill my mind. It’s good to be engaged, interested, anticipating the challenges and rewards of the day unfolding.

Then there are days I awake anxious and for no particular reason. I don’t indulge these moods but despite my best efforts they prevail. I become disconcerted and irritable. Little things seem difficult, difficult things seem insurmountable.

On days like these I’m more keenly aware of intolerance and bigotry, of ignorance. I despair at people’s motives and am appalled by their actions. Frustration gives way to anger, gives way to cynicism, gives way to a feeling of hopelessness.

I’m running out of optimism. I know for a fact that everything is not going to be all right.

I would surrender, but to whom? I would retreat, but to where?

Nothing constructive or creative will happen until I shake this pall of despondency. I gear up and head out.

Even as I approached them my mood begins to lift.

The Maples of Kensington. Eight stately giants – so huge, so proud, so magnificently impersonal.

These are Bigleaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum), the largest of the Maple family perhaps 300 years old, maybe 50 metres high. Being tightly clustered they have developed a narrow crown supported by a trunk free of branches for about half its length.

I stand beneath them, I press my palms against their bark, I take a deep breath and listen.

And they speak to me.

High in their lofty branches the leaves rush and whisper and their sound soothes and reassures. Slowly their benign energy renews my confidence and restores my vitality. The desolation passes, and I feel unburdened, at peace and prepared.

Indian Summer

The summer had inhaled
And held its breath too long*

A strange mood ascends on me as summer slowly draws to an end.

The days have a listless quality, time seems suspended. There’s a feeling of deja vu – though not of an experience, rather an emotion, a dream sense, vague and inarticulate.

It’s like a lost memory – tinged with warning.

It’s about ending – something good, something sweet and easy. It’s about something approaching – new, different, challenging. The anticipation of change sends a ripple of foreboding, but I feel resigned, accepting.

One afternoon I find myself at Trout Lake, the local swimming hole.

When I was a kid the entire family would walk here from our home on East 4th. Sometimes I’d go with my neighbourhood buddies. It was a different world then, no structured play dates, we roamed free seeking and finding adventures. Most of these people are gone now, yet standing on the shore I can hear their happy voices, catch glimpses of them splashing into the green water.

This lake was witness to many rites of passage and figures prominently in my writing. The beach is small and less crowded than I remember. The raft I nearly drowned trying to swim to is not so far. Could it possibly be sixty years since I swam here?

Suddenly I’m enveloped in a sense of longing for a phantom life that almost was, but never will be.

I run across the hot sand, splash through the shallows and dive in.

The water is cool, slightly murky, exactly as I remember it and for brief seconds it washes the years away. I kick hard, go deeper, then roll over. Up through the depths the sun sparkles, shards of diffused light. I’m eight years old until I break the surface and look back to shore.

They’re gone.

And I’m still here.

*From Coming Back to Me, written by Marty Balin,
On Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, 1967

Stay calm, be brave, watch for the signs

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I had a good friend that was diagnosed with Manic Depressive Disorder and he's the biggest reason this book called out to me when I saw it. I always wondered what was going on in there and what the manias and depressions felt like. I always thought that understanding would help me interact with him in those states and not agitate him or exacerbate problems. I don't really know, though, he went off the grid after a particularly bad struggle with the whole evolution, of which I was in his circle, and then returned suddenly to social media, having moved away and found a better way to deal with it all then we could have hoped for. 

I thought of him as I listened to the audiobook and Dr. Jamison explain her experience with this same disorder. I worked through all the behaviors that had been mania and depression and the way he never understood the way the medicine was improving his ability to deal with it. 

As audiobooks go, this is a rather short one. It's just under three hours and eloquently describes the ups and downs that go with this disorder and the way that it progresses during her lifetime. This isn't remembering just one evolution but several as well as the fears that accompany letting others know that she has it, that she might pass it on to children, having dealt with a parent with this disorder. She includes the feeling of the mania and the aftermath, which is more than the depression that follows it. There are inevitable consequences in life for those things that are done in both manic and depressed states. She doesn't shy away from sharing those. But there is also healing and more to healing than medication and more to taking medication than simply being prescribed it. 

Above all, I appreciate that she shared it all and helped the rest of us understand what it is like to be the one that lives with the disorder. It's a beautiful book. 

I have a soft spot for memoirs. Not just memoirs, but memoirs of regular people. I love to learn about the many lives that are out there and reality tv just doesn't do it. Memoirs are personal accounts of the things that people have been through. I've read a few already, but even those are mostly from people who are famous (or were by the time the memoir got into my hands). There is a lot more to the human experience than we see on a daily basis, so the next five memoirs that I've chosen to read (though they will be scattered among other reading in the coming months) are about people and experiences vastly different from my own. Here they are: 

1. I Have Iraq in My Shoe: Misadventures of a Soldier of Fashion - Gretchen Berg  I have had this book on my TBR list for a long time. The title just called me in the middle of the book store. I have a bit of a weakness for stories about acclimating to new areas and cultures and this seems like a fun one. 
2. In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom - Yeonmi Park  I also saw this a little while back. It popped up in my Recommendations feed on one site or another and seemed interesting. 
3. The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson  This is another one that popped up on some feed. The reviews that I read on it were mixed but the premise is enough to put it on my list anyway. It was living and loving someone who is gender fluid that got me. 
4. Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family - Najla Said  I stumbled upon this one while looking for a book about Arab-Americans. I was checking the Heritage/Diversity months and discovered that April is Arab-American month which led me to realize that I had yet to read about any real Arab-Americans. I say real because I LOVE Kamala Khan, but she is fictional. 
5. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness - Kay Redfield Jamison I don't know about you, but mental illness scares me. It is often poorly self-diagnosed and I rarely know people who seek treatment. Even in that rare instance, sticking to a regiment can be arduous, proving illness can be tough, and it takes a toll on everyone, not just the ill person. This memoir explores manic depression from inside and outside the institution that treats it. 

Do you read memoirs? What are you reading next? 

This book is great for first graders who have trouble expressing their emotions. It also helps children build empathy toward others. Who doesn't have  days where they feel silly, especially a child?? This would be a read aloud book and a discussion would follow on our different emotions and how we can respond to those emotions and how we can help others when they are feeling silly.