ABOUT THIS BOOK My name is Kristina Sargent and I am an Early Childhood Mental Health Therapist in Cincinnati, Ohio. I enjoy working with young children and realize the importance of using books as a means to introduce social skills, identify feelings, and help children learn about their world. Buttons learns to be Brave is a story designed to help children develop empathy, the ability to see how someone else is feeling from the other’s perspective. Empathy is a crucial building block for the further development of appropriate social skills and healthy attachments with others. To develop empathy, children learn that others have their own thoughts, feelings, likes, and dislikes (as Buttons learns in the story about his friend Penny). Encouraging children to empathize with others by pointing out feelings and offering suggestions of ways to comfort, are great ways to help children develop this skill. The teacher cat in the story points out Buttons' friend's feelings and encourages him to empathize with her ("She looks sad Buttons, what can you do to help her feel better?"). Children also develop empathy as adults in their lives talk about feelings and empathize with their children. In the story, Buttons' grandmother validates Buttons' feelings and uses this as an opportunity to talk about different feelings and how everyone experiences them. Buttons' grandmother also empathizes with him by creating a loving ritual (secret goodbye high five) to repeat every time she leaves him to help him feel safe.

Mindful Games for Kids is an engaging book of activities for children ages 4-8, teaching them how to use all the principles of mindfulness including calming themselves, focusing on the present, and being kinder to others. Dealing with big feelings can be hard, but it's easier when you practice listening to your body and staying in the present moment. 50 colorfully illustrated, imaginative exercises keep the fun coming while showing kids helpful techniques like deep breathing, visualization, meditation, and more. Many of these off-the-page games take 10 minutes or less, making it easy to practice the magic of mindfulness anytime, anywhere. Inside Mindful Games for Kids, you'll find: 50 fantastic games—Discover mindful games like My Big Bat Ears, Hearing My Breath, As Cool as a Snowflake, and Sing My Emotions—all created for kids ages 4-8. Imagination invitation—Explore activities themed around breath, senses, thoughts, emotions, and the body—most don't require supplies, just an imagination! Mindful together—Kids can play these mindful games alone or with other people (grown-ups are invited too!) —the supportive guidelines include ways for anyone to win. Kids can find a peaceful mind through fun and games—with Mindful Games for Kids!

New York Times bestselling author and artist James Dean brings readers a new story about the most gallant cat around—Pete! This time Pete is a knight on an adventure to save a pal in Pete the Cat: Sir Pete the Brave. When Lady Callie, the most awesome harpist in all the land, goes missing, it’s up to Sir Pete to save her. But when he ends up trapped in a dragon’s lair, Lady Callie might have to do the saving. Pete the Cat: Sir Pete the Brave is a My First I Can Read book, which means it’s perfect for shared reading with a child.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An incredible, revolutionary true story and surprisingly simple guide to teaching your dog to talk from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger, who has taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using simple paw-sized buttons associated with different words. When speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger first came home with her puppy, Stella, it didn’t take long for her to start drawing connections between her job and her new pet. During the day, she worked with toddlers with significant delays in language development and used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate. At night, she wondered: If dogs can understand words we say to them, shouldn’t they be able to say words to us? Can dogs use AAC to communicate with humans? Christina decided to put her theory to the test with Stella and started using a paw-sized button programmed with her voice to say the word “outside” when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house. A few years later, Stella now has a bank of more than thirty word buttons, and uses them daily either individually or together to create near-complete sentences. How Stella Learned to Talk is part memoir and part how-to guide. It chronicles the journey Christina and Stella have taken together, from the day they met, to the day Stella “spoke” her first word, and the other breakthroughs they’ve had since. It also reveals the techniques Christina used to teach Stella, broken down into simple stages and actionable steps any dog owner can use to start communicating with their pets. Filled with conversations that Stella and Christina have had, as well as the attention to developmental detail that only a speech-language pathologist could know, How Stella Learned to Talk will be the indispensable dog book for the new decade.

Stories by author of "Little Women".

Explore the wonderful world of tortoiseshell cats and tortoiseshell cat behavior Tortie cat behavior: With about 2 million tortoiseshell cats in the United States, these special felines tend to be strong-willed, a bit hot-tempered, and often very possessive of their humans. Other words used to describe torties are fiercely independent, feisty and unpredictable. In Tortitude: The BIG Book About Cats With a BIG Attitude, cat expert Ingrid King (The Conscious Cat) brings her professional and personal experience to explore why these cats are so special. With expert insights combined with stunning photography and passages dedicated to the cats and their passionate guardians, King offers a new perspective on these exceptional cats.

Max is a cute kitten who dreams of becoming a brave mouse-catcher. So he sets off in search of a mouse, and discovers that bravery perhaps is not so important after all.

I Once upon a time there raged in a certain city one of those fashionable epidemics which occasionally attack our youthful population. It wasn't the music mania, nor gymnastic convulsions, nor that wide-spread malady, croquet. Neither was it one of the new dances which, like a tarantula-bite, set every one a twirling, nor stage madness, nor yet that American lecturing influenza which yearly sweeps over the land. No, it was a new disease called the Art fever, and it attacked the young women of the community with great violence. Nothing but time could cure it, and it ran its course to the dismay, amusement, or edification of the beholders, for its victims did all manner of queer things in their delirium. They begged potteries for clay, drove Italian plaster-corkers out of their wits with unexecutable orders got neuralgia and rheumatism sketching perched on fences and trees like artistic hens, and caused a rise in the price of bread, paper, and charcoal, by their ardor in crayoning. They covered canvas with the expedition of scene-painters, had classes, lectures, receptions, and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder was visible; some cast aside crinoline altogether, and stalked about with a severe simplicity of outline worthy of Flaxman. Others flushed themselves with scarlet, that no landscape which they adorned should be without some touch of Turner's favorite tint.

I have recently become passionate about using age-appropriate ways to teach young children mindfulness as a way for children to have some inner peace and inner safety despite their outer life circumstances. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness in the present moment (noticing thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, feelings, and the surrounding environment in the moment instead of getting caught up in the thoughts and worries of past and future). Although many people are familiar with this being very helpful for adults, this is also an excellent skill for children to learn too! Awareness is the foundation to all life experiences and skills. When children increase their awareness in the present moment, they can increase attentive skills, better regulate their feelings, make safe choices, and notice and attend others' feelings. When children notice others' feelings, beautiful things like empathy, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and appropriate assertiveness skills can begin to grow. Just think of a world where children could grow to carry around an awareness of their own inner peace and thus act in peaceful ways in a world that is sometimes anything but peaceful. That is a world I would want to live in and a world I would want to give to future generations.

New York Times bestselling author-artist James Dean brings us a new Pete the Cat adventure, a special reimagining of “The Tortoise and the Hare” as a race between Pete and Turtle, in Pete the Cat: Go, Pete, Go! Ding, ding. There’s nothing Pete the Cat loves to do more on a sunny day than ring his little bell and pedal fast on his bicycle. But on this sunny day, Turtle wants to race someone in his new car. Vroom, vroom! Pete and his bicycle are up for the challenge! And when Pete crosses the finish line, he proves it’s not where you’re going that matters, it’s how groovy of a time you have getting there!