Katherine Bauch

My Magic Bottle of Emotions: Pop! Katherine Bauch

Kids feel things so deeply that, a lot of times, it catches parents off-guard. But there's a way to give kids back their power by helping them find their voice. My Magic Bottle of Emotions explores twelve everyday emotions in a way that's meaningful for young children, using colorful language and illustrations. When you're feeling shy, you're PINK: pink prickles, throat tickles, bashful, quiet, invisible. When you're feeling disappointed, you're BLUE: blue, a lost shoe, let down, confused, frustrated. By the end of this imaginative book, a child will associate emotions with familiar colors, have a better understanding of how emotions appear, and, most importantly, feel safe to let their colorful emotions POP! out of their "magic bottle" so they don't get trapped inside.

Whether a child is typically developing or has special needs, emotions can be difficult to identify and correctly label. This can be especially true for kids that fall on the autism spectrum. Our goal was to create a book that fosters emotional intelligence in children of all abilities. Many kids on the spectrum have varying degrees of sensory processing disorder (SPD). That's why we used as many sensory words as possible used to describe each emotion in this book. "Yellow swing," for example, is a great description for happy because children with SPD often find the act of swinging calming and grounding. The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) recommends using picture books to help children identify emotions and teach them how to deal with their feelings. For children and adults, emotional intelligence (EQ) has been determined to be a greater contributor to success than even IQ.