On a five-minute break at work the other day, I looked at the received books that were to go to the children’s floor and the back cover
of this book was facing me as well as oddly interesting. Turning it over I found This Makes me Jealous with a very upset young lady on the cover. What pray tell, Courtney Carbone (author of said book) is making our young friend so cross?
What it is, is the new girl, Amy, at school. She comes in the middle of our narrators show and tell. She later scores a goal off our young gal (obviously to make her look bad) and so forth. Finally, our gal has had enough and walks away, only to have a teacher ask her what the issue is. And tells her that there are two sides to this story. The language is straight forward, with some humor and great descriptions (the show and tell item was a cactus and our narrator felt as prickly as that cactus when the spotlight was taken away from her). The story is modern but not preachy. Part of the modern story aspect is the diverse characters. Hilli Kushnir’s illustrations are delightful. They are colorful, slightly polished, but not annoyingly so. There are details of the school rooms, playground, etc. but are not overpowering the senses.
This is the third book in the Rodale Kids Curious Readers series. Each book will tackle a different feeling/emotion. Ages six and up can start to read on their own (or for that reader who is still in simpler concept books but is more advanced than the beginning earlier reader). Or you could read to ages four and up.
An interesting introduction to the feeling of being jealous. While not meant for the adult (text is almost “sing-song-like”) it is a good way to bring up feelings. I would love to see all the feelings book in one collection as it would be good for classrooms. It also would work for the sibling that feels a bit left out.
