Calm: A Choose Your Own Attitude Book

In life, sometimes things don’t go our way, but being able to stay calm in stressful or unexpected situations is like a superpower! It helps us think straight. It helps us keep things in perspective. It can even help us to laugh and move on. 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 Evelyn who wonders if the new girl in school is here to steal all her best friends. Help her decide whether to get upset or stay calm and learn a little more about the newest student in her school.

- Help William tackle a disappointing last-minute change of plans from a day at the waterpark to a day home babysitting his little brother.

- Point Harper in the right direction when it comes to tackling her mile-long to-do list.

- Jump into Logan’s most embarrassing moment ever and help him decide whether to play it cool or lose his cool!

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, this series 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.