The concept that people can have different feelings--even conflicting ones--at the same time is important for children to understand. Children will appreciate the reassurance of their feelings' worth. For each set of contrasting emotions, there are two illustrations of the child-one for each emotion. This helps the readers realize that facial expressions and body language can often indicate feelings.

After examining the pictures, I realize that Patterson has created a somewhat diverse world: out of the four main characters, two are male and two are female; two are white, one is African American, and one appears to be Asian American. There is an African American teacher, a sibling who uses crutches, and fathers (as well as mothers) are de-picted as having positive relationships with children. By portraying characters who seem so similar in the text as a physically diverse group, readers get the sense that no matter what someone looks like, he or she has feelings like everyone else.

In short, this book should not be used alone to explain the concept of conflicting emo-tions. In my experience, children--especially younger ones--benefit much more from re-alistic fiction stories than they do from books "to help parents help their children" which is what this book claims to do. In fact, it seems that this book was written more for adults to use as a guide for talking about emotions with children than for the children themselves.