The Way I Feel »

Unable to find a picture book to teach her preschool daughters the words for emotions, Chicago-area artist Janan Cain created The Way I Feel. Aware that many children know nothing more than the words for happy and angry, she describes many emotions, including proud, disappointed, jealous and shy. The colors and shapes in each illustration and the type faces on each page reinforce the mood of the emotion shown. Cain also focuses on the concept of all emotions being normal---"They're all a part of me"---without judgmental labels.

Since the publication of The Way I Feel in 2000, Cain has become a popular "artist in the schools" speaker, demonstrating to young children how they can communicate emotion in their drawings. Her book is also used in libraries, homes, pediatric hospitals, mental health programs and with children with such special needs as autism.

Illustrations and rhyming text portray children experiencing a range of emotions, including frustration, shyness, jealousy, and pride.

Publishers Weekly

First-time author and artist Cain treads familiar ground here with a picture book that pales in comparison to Jamie Lee Curtis's subtler and snappier Today I Feel Silly. From scared to shy, bored to jealous, Cain covers the emotional waterfront in a series of rhymes paired with pastel pencil drawings featuring elflike children. The opening spread, "silly" ("Silly is the way I feel when I make a funny face/ and wear a goofy, poofy hat that takes up lots of space"), casts a child in a rainbow-colored clown outfit against a sunny yellow backdrop and heralds the book's main artistic conceit--a palette picked to suit each mood. "Bored," for instance, is played out on a background of drab tans and browns, while "angry" steams with fiery reds and purples. Though energetic and bright, the cartoonlike illustrations skate close to being strident, while the verses are pedestrian ("Sometimes I feel so very sad and really don't know why./ Instead of playing and having fun, I cry and cry and cry"). Ages 4-8. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.