The Bad Mood and the Stick

By Author / Illustrator

Lemony Snicket, Matthew Forsythe

Genre

Adventure

Age range(s)

Publisher

Andersen Press Ltd

ISBN

9781783446421

Format

Hardback

Published

02-11-2017

Synopsis

Lemony Snicket's simply told story offers a refreshing, thoughtful, and hilarious look at the ways in which a bad mood wreaks havoc as it moves from person to person, leaving an unexpected trail of surprise in its wake: opportunities for laughter, forgiveness and even love. Meet the most endearing and unpredictable bad mood yet - an emoji-like cloud character - who allows young readers to look their bad mood in the eye. From the author of the acclaimed, bestselling picture book The Dark comes another wise observation about the emotional forces that impact our lives.

Reviews

The Bad Mood and the Stick is a good book for everyone with a moody toddler or child. Lemony Snicket has written a very amusing book which captures exactly how a bad mood spreads and grows all over the place and what simple things snap us out of our bad moods. The story starts with Curly who is in a bad mood and who, by using the stick to poke her brother, starts a cascade of the bad mood passing on to other people, her mum, Lou, and Napoleon - but the stick always has a way of being in the right place at the right time to help those moods fly away. There is quite a lot of humour dipped throughout the story and Matt Forsythe's illustrations add another dimension to the story which help to bring it to life. I felt this book would be good to use with our children in school as part of the PSHE programmes we do surrounding managing emotions. The only thing I would say is that the story wasn't easy for younger children to follow and I think it would be more suited to children in KS1 and lower KS2. 38 pages / Ages 5+ / Reviewed by Marie Berry, teacher.