What to do When you are Feeling Blue?

I will always grab a Genevieve Godbout book off the shelves.  Her illustrations are so incredibly beautiful, drawing me in and keeping me around no matter what the story is about.  What’s Up Maloo? is her latest title gently and lovingly touching on mental health in an age appropriate way.

We all have bad days, days where we are just in a funk or in a foggy cloud.  It happens to adults certainly but how many of us think about how it will also affect our children.  There can be an expectation that children should always be happy, these are the best times of their lives after all.  The reality is that sometimes they just feel blue and need strategies to help cope with those feelings which can be scary for a young person.  Enter Genevieve Godbout and Maloo the little kangaroo who hops into a fog and has a difficult time figuring out how to get back hopping again. Maloo’ s friends are there to help them, never leaving their side and coming up with many different plans to help clear the fog.  Ultimately their kindness helps Maloo break out of the blue feelings and they all go off hopping together.

A lovely introduction to mental health so appropriate for our youngest readers to help them understand some of those complex feelings of growing up and how they can help each other break out of a funk.  What’s Up Maloo? is an excellent book to open a dialogue readers about feelings, helping them to name their big feelings and helping them show empathy to their friends when their friends are feeling sad.