Try and Stick with It »

Cheri J. Meiners, M.Ed., has her master’s degree in elementary education and gifted education. A former first-grade teacher, she has taught education classes at Utah State University and has supervised student teachers. Cheri and her husband, David, have six children. They live in Laurel, Maryland.

It’s hard to try new things—for adults as well as children. It’s even harder to stay the course when something is more difficult than we thought it would be, or when things don’t work out the way we hoped. Yet flexibility and perseverance are essential to success in all areas of life, at all ages and stages. This book introduces children to the benefits of trying something new and the basics of stick-to-it-iveness. Includes suggestions adults can use to reinforce the ideas and skills being taught.

Wendy M. Smith-D'Arezzo - Children's Literature

An unnamed boy narrates this lecture about trying until you succeed. Readers are told, "It's fun to try new things" and "It's okay when I make mistakes." They are also given ideas about persevering: imagine the activity going well, take a breath and try again, stick with it. While these are all positive statements and may even be ones that we need to make to children, there is little literary value in this book. It is not a story, yet it is told in story format. The theme is didactic, and most likely, boring to children. The pictures are realistically drawn and the book is politically correct, with a variety of racial types represented as the boy's schoolmates. The last two pages offer ideas to parents and teachers for teaching perseverance to children. These pages could be useful for early childhood educators in reinforcing the concepts outlined in this book, but the ideas presented are likely to be familiar to teachers with classroom experience. 2004, Free Spirit Publishing, Ages 2 to 6.