Summary
This endearing story is about a boy named Clay. Clay does not understand his emotions very much. He meets many people throughout the book, finding that all these people also have emotions just like him and cry. He find that no matter who you are, you can be brave enough to cry. This gives Clay a sense of encouragement and understanding with his own feelings. Clay comes to an appreciation that tears and crying can come from all different places. Clay realized crying is a brave thing to do.
Theme(s):
Emotions, Encouragement, Understanding
Personal Response
I found this book to be an eventful, endearing, learning experience about emotions. Clay can’t understand his emotions when feeling upset towards things that happened at school. When becoming frustrated, he comes across and talks to all different people with different lives and experiences. Clay gets to see emotions through different figures eyes and has his own learning experience as he meets each new person. This is a great way to show emotions can be shown and felt in all different ways.
Teaching Ideas
This book could be used in a social-emotional lesson. After reading the book, we would discuss things that make us feel different types of emotions. We would record our feelings on an anchor chart and talk about ways to cope with these feelings. As a class we can use details from the book and talk about the emotions each character could have been feeling. With this the class can make their own methods and strategies for ways to cope with different feelings.
Recommended Reading Level
Grade 01, Grade 02, Grade 03, Grade 04
