Publication Date: 5 March 2020

The Blurb
Are you looking for happiness? Sometimes it can feel really far away, and sometimes you might have so much you can’t help but share. You can try to chase it, control it or capture it, but even if it seems like it’s gone for a while, you’ll know it’s never far away…

The Review

The second in the Big Emotions Series, following When Sadness Comes To Call, Where Happiness Begins is a beautiful exploration of what happiness is, where it can be found and why sometimes it isn’t around. And that’s ok.

A gentle, profound, thought-provoking story helping children to understand big emotions and how one word can feel different. Whether it’s a content, calm happy, a joyous happy, or a huge overwhelming one, it’s normal for happiness to begin for a huge variety of reasons. And sometimes, we might not feel happy at all.

The limited colours enhance the striking illustrations that show the range of “happy” we can feel, whether it’s doing something we enjoy, spending time with friends and family, or trying something new. The subtleties of the emotion are captured in the characters facial features and body language throughout adding a rich depth to the carefully chosen words.

The sparse text and white space invite thoughts and discussion, including what you can do when happiness isn’t around, and where it can lead us when it is.

This is a fantastic book for opening up conversations about feelings and mental health with children. A must for emotional literacy boxes in school, with a multitude of PSHE uses, from using the end papers to discuss where happiness begins for others, or the shelf for storing where your own happiness begins.

Huge thanks to Toppsta and Andersen Press for selecting me as one of the winners of a copy following the #ToppstaBookClub chat on Twitter.