Grateful!: A Choose Your Own Attitude Book

Feeling grateful is like magic.

It is magical because it changes so many things in our life. It can change the way we feel in our heart, our head, and our body. It also can change how the world around us looks, feels, and even behaves because gratitude is contagious. In this choose-your-own-adventure-style book, readers are asked to help four kids just like them decide what to do in everyday situations. Take a step further with discussion questions and a feelings chart included in the back of the book.

- Meet Olivia who has to decide whether or not a note from the Grateful Jar is just what she needs to get her through the first few weeks of school.

- Learn about Elijah’s busy day and help decide whether writing in his Gratitude Journal will help ease his mind before bed.

- Point Amelia in the right direction when it comes to showing gratitude to those around her even if she doesn’t feel she has the time.

- Learn the power of gratitude and what it means to share it with the world when Henry makes a decision about greeting his favorite teacher at the beginning of the day.

About the Choose Your Own Attitude series: There are many things in life that we can’t control. We cannot decide much of what happens to us, however, we can decide how we react. That is where the Choose Your Own Attitude books can help. Using techniques author Gail Hayes, M.A. has developed through her work as a counselor, Grateful! explores the choices we make when dealing with everyday situations that may make it hard for us to find gratitude and the impact those choices have on how we think and feel.

Gail Hayes has a master’s degree in counseling psychology and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and child studies. She has been working with youth her whole career including over fifteen years in private practice. Choose Your Own Attitude is a series of books that she hopes will help address issues and feelings frequently encountered in her practice. Gail focuses primarily on a cognitive behavioral approach to therapy and many of the techniques implemented by Bubble are the same techniques her clients have found most useful over the years. She hopes to inspire Bubble Thinking as a self-driven approach to the challenges in children’s lives.

Helen Flook was born and currently lives in Wales. She studied art at Norwich School of Art and obtained a BA Hons in graphic design. After graduating, she spent ten enjoyable years in archaeology in the UK, France, and Germany and then two years managing an information center in North Wales for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. She then moved to Canada with her family and lived in Ontario for ten years building her career as an illustrator. She has since moved back to the UK and has had two of her own books published and has illustrated books by well known authors like Ian Rankin, Terry Deary and Rachel Billington. She takes pride in illustrating a number of books for Welsh speaking children about Welsh culture. One book ’Welsh Cakes and Custard’ won the Tir na Nog prize for the best Welsh children’s book in 2014. Helen has been influenced by famous illustrators mainly working in pen and ink like E H Shepard, Quentin Blake, Ralph Steadman and Ronald Searle.