Review: When Sadness Is at Your Door by Eva Eland

Title: When Sadness Is at Your Door
Author: Eva Eland
Format: ARC
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Publish Date: January 29, 2019 (Today!)
Source: Publisher

What's the Story?

From Goodreads.com: "Sadness can be scary and confusing at any age! When we feel sad, especially for long periods of time, it can seem as if the sadness is a part of who we are--an overwhelming, invisible, and scary sensation.

In When Sadness Is at Your Door, Eva Eland brilliantly approaches this feeling as if it is a visitor. She gives it a shape and a face, and encourages the reader to give it a name, all of which helps to demystify it and distinguish it from ourselves. She suggests activities to do with it, like sitting quietly, drawing, and going outside for a walk. The beauty of this approach is in the respect the book has for the feeling, and the absence of a narrative that encourages the reader to "get over" it or indicates that it's "bad," both of which are anxiety-producing notions."

My Two Cents:

In my short journey in being a parent (my girls will be four years old this year), one of the most difficult things that my husband and I have been through is helping our girls with their emotions. Emotions are a part of the human condition but it can be hard to deal with them. "When Sadness is at Your Door" is a good primer on how even feelings like sadness have a place and shouldn't be pushed aside or forgotten. It is okay to be sad (oh, this is definitely a lesson that I am still learning as an adult).

2018 was a very challenging year for us as a family. When the tree fell on our house back in June, I so wish I would have had this book to help my girls see that it is okay to be sad. Sadness will eventually float away and it's important to embrace feelings as they come. My girls loved this book and it made for a good opener for the girls to ask a lot of good questions about feelings. Any book that can get us talking is a good one to me. I liked the philosophy of this book and how it was able to take a difficult topic and turn it into something that my girls could easily understand it and embrace the lessons!