The Way I Feel

            The Way I Feel is both written and illustrated by Janan Cain.  It is written for younger elementary students and for students in special education classrooms.  I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

            This book displays a different emotion on each page with a description of situations that ignite that emotion and illustrate the way people look when they are feeling that way.  Some of the emotions discussed are disappointed, thankful, and jealous, among others.  Each page is also written in rhyme and the font is arranged in various ways, mostly reflecting the emotion using curvy lines or jagged edges. 

            This book would be excellent if used in a special education classroom since a lot of those children struggle when expressing how they are feeling in words.  When I observed in a special education classroom, there was an emotion wall that had different emotions with facial expressions to visually cue the students into what the emotion meant.  This was useful when students were very emotional but felt like they were unreachable by the teacher because they could not vocalize how they were feeling.  This book would be great to introduce the idea of an emotion wall and can be used to describe each emotion in some detail for reference.