If you have small children of your own, you may have experienced their feelings at new situations. Author, Ana Crespo, has taken these experiences one at a time and written about them from a small child’s point-of-view in her “My Emotions and Me”  series of  books. On the front cover of each book in the top right-hand corner, there is a ‘Mood-o-Meter’ with the emotion this particular story will be exploring. In J.P. and the Polka-Dotted Aliens,  the emotion is that of being mad.

Little J.P. is happily playing with his monkey mask, in the park on the spaceship big toy, until two little girls in polka-dotted dresses come along. Then, he is mad. J.P. does not like the little girls invading his space, who he sees as polka-dotted blobs, decorating his spaceship with flowers. “I almost screamed. I was so mad,” says J.P. as he stomps his feet. “Then I remembered I am a fun monkey.” Soon the monkey and the aliens are getting along. “We had a fancy outer-space tea party.”

This book could be used by an adult and a child to open up a discuss on being upset, to recall with a child when he was upset and how it was resolved, and because it is written at such a beginning reading level it could be read again and again by the child himself.

Pre-schoolers and young children can transition from being mad to happy again in a short amount of time. Ana Crespo includes her own take on this in “A Note to Parents and Teachers from the Author.” This is taken from her own life experiences and research she has done. She states she is not a behavior specialist of any kind.