When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry...: Caldecott Review #3

When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry... by Molly Bang is a story about a little girl who has a temper. She gets very upset when her sister grabs the gorilla she was playing with. Sophie gets angry when her mother yells at her for this. She gets absolutely enraged when she falls over the fire truck because of her sister pulling at her gorilla. She screams and kicks and even says she wants to "smash the world into smithereens!" She decides to just run. She runs and runs until she cannot run anymore. She begins to cry. Finally she climbs a tree and notices the beauty of the outdoors. She begins to feel better and returns home comforted by nature.

My favorite part of this story is the strong message this story sends to young children. Anger can be very emotional and frightening for a young child. The author does an excellent job connecting with children's emotions throughout this story and uses bright colors and flames to express anger. She provides comfort through her story by allowing readers to see that all individuals have emotions and they are not alone when they are having feelings like Sophie. In fact, she lets the reader know that it is okay to feel upset and angry sometimes. She teaches children that different people handle anger in different ways. It is up to us as individuals to decide what we can do to calm ourselves when we get angry. I love how this book lends itself to open discussions about emotions and children's feelings.

My reaction to this book were influenced by childhood memories of me getting very angry with my older brother. I can remember times when I really did feel like Sophie with so much anger built up when we were arguing that I thought I was a volcano too, getting ready to explode! I think as a child I always felt alone when I would feel this way. I definitely didn't like the feeling of anger and I think for years, just like most children, struggled to find a way to deal with it. I usually got so upset that I would be the one to get in trouble even if it was something I didn't do, simply because of the temper tantrum I would throw! I eventually learned that I deal with anger by simply walking away from the situation and taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down. Children need to learn that nothing is worth throwing a tantrum over. Almost anything can be resolved through a calm conversation.

Molly Bang has written a variety of children books. She began her career just writing books that she enjoyed. However, once she had her daughter she became influenced in another way. She began writing books that taught children certain concepts or themes such as Ten, Nine, Eight and Dawn. In the past 10 or 15 years, she has become more concerned about American children's lack of knowledge about even the most basic scientific principles, so she has written four books about science in an attempt to help change this. Her science books in comparison to the book discussed in this blog also teach children useful concepts. As an author it seems that her goal is to not only entertain students but to teach them about everyday feelings and concepts in the world around us.

I read this book to my first graders for the Second Step program one day. We did a follow-up activity that allowed students to make a web of things that made them angry. Then they chose one thing that made them angry from their web and they drew an illustration. On the back they wrote a complete sentence identifying what they could do to calm themselves down in a situation such as this. I think books like this are extremely important in children's literature because children need to learn at a young age how to deal with their emotions properly. This book uses vivid colors and a character that they can relate to in order to portray such an important message to children.