A Shelter for Sadness
$17.99 USD
Hardcover
This poignant picture book explores the many faces of sadness and addresses the importance of mental health in a child-friendly way.
A small boy creates a shelter for his sadness so that he can visit it whenever he needs to, and the two of them can cry, talk, or just sit. The boy knows that one day his sadness may come out of the shelter, and together they will look out at the world and see how beautiful it is.
In this timely consideration of sadness and mental health, Anne Booth offers a beautiful depiction of how children (and everyone else) must care for their emotions and give attention to their grief on a regular basis. Stunning illustrations by David Litchfield bring the beautiful concept to life with a manifestation of sadness that the protagonist interacts with throughout the story.
Anne Booth lives in a lovely English village with her husband and four children—and the children’s grandfather across the road. They have two hens called Poppy and Anastasia and two dogs called Timmy and Ben. Anne loves tea and once won a Blue Peter badge for writing a poem about two mice in a bucket of rice. Despite this, she does not own any mice.
David Litchfield is a multi-award winning illustrator and author represented by the Bright Agency. David first started to draw when he was very young, creating Star Wars and Indiana Jones mash up comics for his older brother and sister. Since then David's work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, books and on T-shirts. He has also exhibited his illustrations in both solo and group shows in the UK, Europe, and America. He lives in England.
★ “Inspired by the writings of a Holocaust survivor, Booth’s graceful, understated text is open to interpretation according to the listener’s experiences, but the fundamental theme of accepting one’s sadness can resonate at any age. . . A beautiful, moving picture book.”—Booklist, Starred Review
“It seems useful and healthy to visualize compassion and acceptance toward one’s own feelings, and these meditative scenes provide gentle emotional prompts in that direction. . . The pair’s final walk into the sunset reinforces the complex, necessary idea that beautiful and difficult emotions can coexist.”—Kirkus Reviews
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