The titles in this extraordinary series are a vital resource. Nine practical guidebooks, each with an accompanying beautifully illustrated storybook, have been written to help children (aged 4-12) think about and connect with their feelings. These guides and stories enable teachers, parents and professionals to recognise the unresolved feelings behind a child's behaviour and to respond correctly to help. How Hattie Hated Kindness is a story for children locked in rage or hate: (A story for children locked in rage or hate). Hattie lives by herself on an island. She likes sharks, and crabs and stinging centipedes. She likes anything hard and spiky. Lots of people try to bring kindness to Hattie on her island, but each time she is very horrid to them, smashing and spoiling everything they try to do for her. So after a while they all stop coming to the island. Hattie is very alone. So she sits by the water's edge and tries to figure out why she hates love and loves hate. She thinks it must be because she is a very bad girl indeed. But the lapping water-over-her-toes helps Hattie to understand that because she'd been a very sad and frightened little girl in a too hard world, she had become hard too, so that the awful fear and the awful pain would go away. The lapping-water-over-her-toes helps Hattie to move from cruel to kind. In the end, Hattie builds a bridge to the warm and cosy world across the water.

A story for children who have hardened their hearts or become bullies. Bipley is a warm cuddly creature, but someone has broken his heart. He feels so hurt that he decides it is just too painful to ever love again. When he meets some big tough Honks in the wood, they teach him how to harden his heart so that he doesn't have to feel hurt any more. Luckily Bipley meets some creatures who teach him how he can protect himself without hardening his heart.

Adopted children who have experienced loss, abuse or neglect need additional support for their emotional development, and are more likely to have special educational needs. This useful resource provides a complete plan for creating adoption-friendly environments in primary, secondary and specialist schools. The book is grounded on new research which gathered together testimonies from over 400 school staff members, adoptive parents and adoption specialists. With realistic consideration of pressures and limitations currently faced by schools, it gives advice on eight key areas for school development, including communicating with parents, training staff, using resources wisely and recognising children's individual needs. Completing the toolkit is a broad selection of photocopiable and downloadable plans for establishing adoption-friendly frameworks, and for demonstrating good practice to staff, pupils, families and school inspectors.

The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town.

Sherman Smith saw the most terrible thing happen. At first he tried to forget about it, but soon something inside him started to bother him. He felt nervous for no reason. Sometimes his stomach hurt. He had bad dreams. And he started to feel angry and do mean things, which got him in trouble. Then he met Ms. Maple, who helped him talk about the terrible thing that he had tried to forget. Now Sherman is feeling much better. This gently told and tenderly illustrated story is for children who have witnessed any kind of violent or traumatic episode, including physical abuse, school or gang violence, accidents, homicide, suicide, and natural disasters such as floods or fire. An afterword by Sasha J. Mudlaff written for parents and other caregivers offers extensive suggestions for helping traumatized children, including a list of other sources that focus on specific events.

"This saga of bad luck and good company is a wry, scary, heartfelt ode to the traverses we have to make in life when we're at the end of our rope and there's no net below us." —ELLE When Hattie's moody boyfriend dumps her in Paris, she returns home to find that her sister Min is in the psych ward again. Freaked out by the prospect of becoming a surrogate mother to Min's kids, Logan and Thebes, Hattie decides to take them in the family van to find their father, last heard to be running an idiosyncratic art gallery in South Dakota. What ensues is a remarkable journey across America, as aunt and kids—through chaos as diverse as their personalities—discover one another to be both far crazier and far more normal than any of them thought.