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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
What is anxiety, and how can you manage it?
How can you understand and express your emotions?
Why do we experience low mood, and what can we do to help?
Dr Emily’s reassuring guide is filled with tips, techniques and useful information to help you maintain good mental health while growing up.
Emily MacDonagh is a doctor who practices in the National Health Service. This is a well-intentioned book aimed at helping readers aged 9+ to understand and express their emotions and the impact of hormones as they grow older. Although there is some solid, practical advice, the tone is a little patronising at times and the illustrations by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian are pretty flat and uninspiring (albeit with good representation).
MacDonagh begins the book by discussing hormones and the physical impact of puberty on your body. She then moves on to give an overview of the impact that puberty and hormones can have on your brain and what you can do to help manage this. MacDonagh writes in a reassuring way and there are solid tips in there about what young readers can do to help manage this (although I did wish she’d made some of these tips more appropriate, e.g. explaining what “healthy” food is).
The next 5 chapters examine how to deal with emotions, going in depth into managing worry, sadness, anger and how to feel good. Again, there is useful advice here and MacDonagh explains what drives these emotions, how to identify them and how you can handle them (or, in the case of feeling good, continue to feel good). My issue though is that I found her attempt to share her own experiences somewhat flat and unconvincing and at times it just read as patronising. This is a shame because it does undercut the effectiveness of some of her advice.
The book examines unhelpful strategies to dealing with your emotions, which was sensible although it pulled its punches when it came to mentioning self harm and I think MacDonagh could have been a bit more explicit here about what she meant without being gratuitous. The chapters on saying how you feel, embracing change, boosting self esteem, your support team and bullying are all fine - again, useful tips and exercises in there but tonally I still found it a little patronising.
The book is illustrated by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian who have ensured that there is solid representation in here - different ethnic and racial groups and a wheelchair user - but they’re weirdly flat and I found them a bit uninspiring.
Ultimately this isn’t a bad book. I think that the target audience will find advice in there that is of use to them, but equally I have read a number of books of this type aimed at the same age group and I don’t think it strikes the right tone to be a really great help.
The Verdict:
Emily MacDonagh is a doctor who practices in the National Health Service. This is a well-intentioned book aimed at helping readers aged 9+ to understand and express their emotions and the impact of hormones as they grow older. Although there is some solid, practical advice, the tone is a little patronising at times and the illustrations by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian are pretty flat and uninspiring (albeit with good representation).
HEALTHY MIND HAPPY YOU: HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH was released in the United Kingdom on 18th January 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
How can you understand and express your emotions?
Why do we experience low mood, and what can we do to help?
Dr Emily’s reassuring guide is filled with tips, techniques and useful information to help you maintain good mental health while growing up.
Emily MacDonagh is a doctor who practices in the National Health Service. This is a well-intentioned book aimed at helping readers aged 9+ to understand and express their emotions and the impact of hormones as they grow older. Although there is some solid, practical advice, the tone is a little patronising at times and the illustrations by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian are pretty flat and uninspiring (albeit with good representation).
MacDonagh begins the book by discussing hormones and the physical impact of puberty on your body. She then moves on to give an overview of the impact that puberty and hormones can have on your brain and what you can do to help manage this. MacDonagh writes in a reassuring way and there are solid tips in there about what young readers can do to help manage this (although I did wish she’d made some of these tips more appropriate, e.g. explaining what “healthy” food is).
The next 5 chapters examine how to deal with emotions, going in depth into managing worry, sadness, anger and how to feel good. Again, there is useful advice here and MacDonagh explains what drives these emotions, how to identify them and how you can handle them (or, in the case of feeling good, continue to feel good). My issue though is that I found her attempt to share her own experiences somewhat flat and unconvincing and at times it just read as patronising. This is a shame because it does undercut the effectiveness of some of her advice.
The book examines unhelpful strategies to dealing with your emotions, which was sensible although it pulled its punches when it came to mentioning self harm and I think MacDonagh could have been a bit more explicit here about what she meant without being gratuitous. The chapters on saying how you feel, embracing change, boosting self esteem, your support team and bullying are all fine - again, useful tips and exercises in there but tonally I still found it a little patronising.
The book is illustrated by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian who have ensured that there is solid representation in here - different ethnic and racial groups and a wheelchair user - but they’re weirdly flat and I found them a bit uninspiring.
Ultimately this isn’t a bad book. I think that the target audience will find advice in there that is of use to them, but equally I have read a number of books of this type aimed at the same age group and I don’t think it strikes the right tone to be a really great help.
The Verdict:
Emily MacDonagh is a doctor who practices in the National Health Service. This is a well-intentioned book aimed at helping readers aged 9+ to understand and express their emotions and the impact of hormones as they grow older. Although there is some solid, practical advice, the tone is a little patronising at times and the illustrations by Josefina Preumayr and Ana Sebastian are pretty flat and uninspiring (albeit with good representation).
HEALTHY MIND HAPPY YOU: HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH was released in the United Kingdom on 18th January 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
