Friday, July 22, 2011

Read, comment, and be entered to WIN this book!


“Where Did My Good Mood Go?” is written by Ava Parnass, a child and family psychotherapist who has been in practice for over 15 years. This book seems to take its cue from some of Jamie Lee Curtis’s children’s books, telling a simple story about a young character’s bad mood in rhyme, with illustrations by Kate Kaminski.

The book describes a day in the life of someone who has lost their “good mood” and how that affects their day and the time they spend with their family and friends. From waking in the morning and searching for that elusive good mood, through a day at school where friends tease and a teacher criticizes, then home again to deal with grown-up questions that make the lead character cranky, the verses accurately describe how a child might feel on one of those days where everything just goes wrong.

Mushy, a “magic book” that lives in the computer of the unhappy main character pops up to help find that mysteriously missing good mood, and with Mushy’s help, the young protagonist discovers that discussing the problems of the day with “Mushy” (and with grown-ups) helps him or her to understand the feelings they’ve been dealing with.

While I initially questioned the wisdom of having a computer lead the way to discussions of feelings, discovering that the next book in line for review features “Mushy” in an expanded role helped me better understand why the character is used in “Where Did My Good Mood Go?” As nannies and parents all know, familiarity is a key concept in children’s literature, and developing a favorite character is the goal of any author of children’s books. Ms. Parness is working on making “Mushy” into a character children love and want to hear about over and over.

One issue I had with the book was the illustrations. I reviewed a .pdf format, so my comments are based on that version. I don’t feel that the illustrations helped carry the story very well. There was no clear lead character that appeared on every page of the story, and I felt that lack of continuity might make the story harder to follow for some children.

The message sent by this book is one of acceptance from adults in a child’s life, regardless of how the child is feeling or acting. Although the illustrations in the .pdf format of the book that I read might make the story harder to follow for readers under 2 or 3 years old, I think the overall tone and accessibility of this story might make it a favorite of the children in your life, especially kids from ages 4 – 8.

For more information about Ms. Parness, Ms. Kaminski, and the other books and songs currently available from them and other writers and artists, please visit www.ListenToMePlease.com 

Please comment below with your name or your blogger ID to be entered to win a copy of “Where Did My Good Mood Go?” Entries will be accepted until July 31, 2011, and the winner will be announced on August 1, 2011. 


ETA: Ms. Parness has let me know that "Mushy" is a book that lives in a computer!

12 comments:

Mary Preston said...

Fabulous giveaway thank you!!

marypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a great book and would love to read more !

Katrina said...

Sounds like a great tool to use with kids!

Monica said...

Would love to win this.

Thanks!

Megan said...

I would love to win!
mew1121@yahoo.com

Vee said...

I am very interested to read that book.

Mushy1127 said...

Considering I am "Mushy" I'd be cool with winning.

DonnaZ said...

I would love to win this for my kids!!

Judy said...

Our 3yo could definitely use something like this....

judychrz at gmail

Cassie M said...

My daughter is five, and it sounds like this would be great for her!
Cassie
cjm92995@yahoo.com

Tales from the (Nanny)Hood said...

Thanks to all of you who entered! I used:

http://www.random.org/sequences/?min=1&max=11&col=1&format=html&rnd=new

to randomly sequence the number of entries, and decided that the first number in the random sequence the program generated would be the winner of the book.

The number picked first was 11, so our 11th entry is the winner - congratulations Cassie! Please look for an email from me and from Ava (listentomeplease.com) for more information!

Another book giveaway will start in a few days!

Tales from the (Nanny)Hood said...

Everyone, I wanted to clarify something that I just realized. I misread an early email from the author, and thought the giveaway was for hard copies of the books. That is NOT the case. The prize is an "ebook", presumably the PDF printable version, although I am not sure about that.

If you found me through Prizey or another giveaway site where I declared a $ value for this prize, I am so very sorry if the information I offered was in any way misleading.