Children's Book Review: Why I Feel Series by Rupa Publications

The What Is That series was designed to help very young children understand the world around them. The Why I Feel series is about something far more tender and complex. It is about helping them understand the world within them. Children feel emotions before they know the words for them. For a very young child, the space between feeling something deeply and knowing how to express it can be a lonely, confusing place. These five books, Why I Feel Sad, Why I Feel Scared, Why I Feel Happy, Why I Feel Nervous, and Why I Feel Bored, hit that gap dead center and give young children the language and the reassurance they need to start to understand what is happening in their own hearts. What Moonstone has learned in putting this series together is that emotional intelligence in young children is learned not through instruction but through recognition, through the profound relief of seeing your feeling mirrored back at you from a page, and knowing that it has a name, that other children feel it too, and that it is totally normal to feel this way. Each book in the series focuses on one emotion and explores it with the honesty and gentleness that very young readers need. The books never minimize what the child is feeling but always leave them with the feeling that it's manageable, temporary, and part of being human.

It’s intriguing to pause and reflect on the selection of five emotions. It’s not the obvious five. Sadness and happiness are to be expected. It’s acceptable to be frightened. But the real ingenuity behind this series is shown in Nervous and Bored. Nervousness is one of the most common feelings of early childhood, the first day of school, a new place, and a new person, yet it is often overlooked and not given its own book, space, or validation. Even less often is boredom discussed, yet every parent knows that boredom in a young child is a real emotional experience that children struggle to name and manage. Including these two emotions alongside the more familiar ones indicates that the people behind this series were thinking carefully about what children really feel rather than what adults think they feel. The illustrations are warm and expressive, perfectly suited for the age group, and effectively convey the emotional weight of each book. The characters’ faces are drawn clearly enough that even the youngest reader can look at them and instantly recognize the feeling being portrayed, which is a deceptively challenging thing to illustrate and a mark of exceptional skill in the artist. The colors change depending on the emotional tone of each book—warmer and brighter in Why I Feel Happy, quieter and softer in Why I Feel Sad—and there is a visual intelligence in these decisions that works on the child even before the words have been read aloud.

The books, like the What Is That series, are sturdy board books, with laminated pages that can withstand the handling of very young children and the spills that are bound to occur with that age group. This practical quality is as important to parents seeking books that will last through multiple children and readings as the content. The real power of the Why I Feel series is in the conversation that it sparks between parent and child. These books invite a shared reading, not a passive experience, each page a gentle nudge for a child to say, “Yes, I feel like that sometimes, too,” and for a parent to respond with the words that will make a fleeting feeling an understood and accepted part of life. In a world that's starting to see the importance of early emotional literacy for long-term well-being, these five little books are doing something really meaningful—in the most unpretentious, accessible, and loving way possible. The collection is a series that should be in every home with a two- to seven-year-old child and on the shelf of every nursery, playgroup, and early years classroom in the country.

Title: Why I Feel Series 

Publisher: Moonstone- Rupa Publications. 

Availablility: Amazon, Flipkart, and at rupapublications.co.in.