Peaceful Me

PreS-Gr 2–A brown-skinned child with black hair describes all the ways that they feel peaceful: with other people or alone, inside or outside, having fun or doing kind things. They also describe how to regain that peaceful feeling when it doesn’t come naturally: “Sometimes being peaceful is easy. Sometimes it takes work to get there.” The child takes a deep breath in and out, finds a quiet place, pictures favorite things, or finds a hug. The first-person narration is simple and direct, and the art, created with hand-printed textures, complements and enhances it beautifully: the child’s exhale appears as a spiral, and a bird’s-eye illustration of them floating in the water is stunning: ripples form a ring around them, light bounces off the water, leaves float on the surface with a sliver of shadow beneath. Like Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska’s The Quiet Book, and Julia Denos and E.B. Goodale’s Here and Now, this is a book that refrains from didacticism and connects directly with children through its text and pictures equally and effectively.