A place for feelings

Mara's town is orderly and pristine. There is a proper place for everything: roses bloom in gardens, popsicles are eaten at park picnic tables. In her neat-as-a-pin home, the joyful, high-energy little girl puts her muddy shoes on a specified rack, finds special spots for her treasured collections, and keeps "broken bits of things" she didn't mean to break in a designated glass jar. After a squabble with a peer on the playground, Mara has trouble containing her woe. Her mother counsels her to find a hiding place for her feelings. The child's emotions are "too wild. Too messy. Too much" to be locked up in a fancy jewelry box, tidily folded in a closet, or frozen and stashed away in containers at the back of the freezer. Ladi's digital illustrations render the child's feelings as impressionistic bursts of beautiful swirling colors, patterns, and shapes that enliven and enhance the entire community when allowed to be released and shared. A fable-like social-emotional conversation starter.

Big feelings needn't be scary. For Mara, "There's a place for everything!" She's tucked treasures--even pieces of items she broke unintentionally--into special receptacles. After a confrontation with an angry playmate, Mara realizes that she doesn't have a place for her "terrible feeling." Mom explains that one can also keep feelings stored away; hers are in a jewelry box. Mom also divulges where Mara's brother and dad keep theirs--his closet and the freezer, respectively. Mara figures there must be a feelings repository for her. She tries some ideas, but her feelings don't fit anywhere. They burst from her dollhouse and can't be contained within her family's hiding places. Mara's emotions are "too big, too wild"; there simply isn't room for them. Oh, but there is: They fit everywhere. Images depict colorful lines and shapes wafting through the neighborhood, to everyone's delight. The idea that it's OK to feel big emotions and helpful to share them with others is an important one. It's not conveyed convincingly, however, and the ending, while uplifting, strains credulity and ignores the fact that little ones do need to find ways to keep complex emotions in check. Lively illustrations, created digitally and with colored pencils, depict Mara and her family as tan-skinned; background characters are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, age, and physical ability. Heartfelt but overly idealistic. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.