Review Detail

“Calm” by Gail Hayes is an interesting book that allows readers to experience a “choose your own adventure” type story. Everyone has to deal with the thoughts in their heads, and sometimes those thoughts are not always the easiest to handle. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Keeping things in perspective, and dealing with the outcomes of our choices in positive, productive ways is part of what makes us unique as humans. We get to determine the best course of action for the issues that we’re dealing with, and that can sometimes be a harder task than we might imagine.

Feeling calm or feeling stressed out are two of the choices for how someone can feel. This book says that these choices represent two different mindsets, and the book calls these Bubble Thinking or Slug Thinking. Gail Hayes makes it so that readers can choose their own attitudes (rather than adventures) and decide if they will do Bubble Thinking or Slug Thinking to move forward from the issue at hand. Bubble Thinking brings about relaxation and calming tendencies much quicker than Slug Thinking, which creates stressful thoughts that are much harder to avoid.

Whether trying to decide how one feels when jealous, disappointed, overwhelmed, or embarrassed, there are a number of stories included in this book to help readers determine the best thought process to move forward. The back matter of the book also includes additional discussion questions about each individual story that is included to help delve further into the thoughts that might make someone feel those original feelings in the first place. There is also an emotion chart to help guide readers to a better understanding of their feelings. The stories in this book will be a useful guide for young readers and older readers alike as they try to find the calm within themselves.