For those times when we want to help our students cool down, be patient, and pause before saying whatever is on their mind, I recommend Julia Cook and illustrator Carrie Hartman’s (2005) My Mouth is a Volcano.
 
In My Mouth is a Volcano (Cook, 2005), Louis is told that he erupts, just like a volcano. Through lively language and colorful illustrations, readers come to learn how Louis interrupts others and are given many glimpses into his interrupting at school and at home. He just cannot keep his thoughts to himself or wait until others are done speaking. Until, of course, Louis is interrupted by one of his classmates. It takes this moment for him to realize what he has been doing to others all along! This moment provides opportunities for you and your students to discuss what it means to consider others’ feelings before acting.

There’s no need to stray away from the negative emotions with your students because there are just some days when we feel, well, grumpy. Even though Jim, a monkey, does not think he’s grumpy in author Suzanne Lang and illustrator Max Lang’s (2018) Grumpy Monkey, all the other jungle animals think he is. As is sometimes true with our students – and us – naming someone else’s feelings for them often does not go well. 
 
Jim dismisses (rather rudely) all of the animals’ ideas about his feelings and suggestions on how to improve his mood. Just as with most humans, Jim needs to eventually come to the realization that he is grumpy on his own ... and after he has some time to cool down and assess his own situation.
 
What this book helps us understand is that not only is it okay to feel grumpy (or any other emotion for that matter) but that sometimes we all need time to process our emotions. What is also a cool thing at the end of Grumpy Monkey (Lang, 2018) is that only when Jim has come to terms with his emotions can he be helpful to his friend. This is a really important message in this book.

It should be no surprise that even many elementary school students struggle with worry and anxiety. Percival’s (2018) Ruby Finds a Worry is just the book to help you talk about these topics with your students.
 
Ruby is full of joy ... until she feels a little worry. But the worry, which is shown as a colorful blob behind her in the illustrations, gets worse and worse. And even though she tries to hide it, it will not go away. Until, that is, she notices another boy has a worry. And they learn that the only way to get worry to go away is to talk about it. And it’s not an unrealistic depiction of a worry-free world; it’s an honest approach to the fact that worry does exist but that humans can have coping mechanisms with which to face our worries.
 
Ruby Finds a Worry (Percival, 2018) is wonderful not just in its visual and written depictions of what having extreme worry can be like but also in its discussion of how it is important to talk about one’s worry. What Ruby realizes is an important lesson to student and adult readers alike: Keeping feelings in can cause more harm than good. This book provides a platform for readers to engage in conversations on what it is that worry feels like to each individual but also about who are trusted people in our lives with whom we can share our worries.

When I read Loren Long’s (2024) The Yellow Bus, I felt a sense of nostalgia for Shel Silverstein’s (1964) The Giving Tree. For years a bus shuttles happy, noisy school children, feeling a deep sense of joy. One day the bus is taken out of the school bus rotation and starts giving adult riders lifts to their myriad destinations. The bus is full of joy then, too.
 
And then one day, the bus is left in a city lot. The bus is not driving people around. The bus feels an immense emptiness. The bus is lonely and without purpose.
 
What happens in the subsequent pages helps readers see value in self-reinvention and the ultimate human need to be amongst people and feel a sense of purpose. Through several “repottings,” the bus ultimately feels that immense joy again – often in unexpected and beautiful ways.
 
The power in The Yellow Bus (Long, 2024) is its ability to help readers see that joy may not always come in ways that we think it will. But joy is still possible. Even the geographical locations where the bus finds itself mimic the emotional ups and downs that are perfectly normal in life. And whereas joy is certainly the main emotion in the text, it is not the only one. This fact helps readers understand that this sometimes yearned-for permanent joyfulness is not as guaranteed as we may want. For the real value in this text is what joy feels like and looks like may not always remain constant in our lives but it is always possible.