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Author
Jill Osborne
Publisher
Loving Healing Press

2 Review Copies Left

Sam saw something awful and scary! Ms. Carol, a special therapist, will show Sam how to feel better. Children can help Sam feel better too by using drawings, play, and storytelling activities. They will be able to identify and manage their own feelings and difficulties in their lives following a traumatic event, crisis, or grief.

Therapists' Acclaim for Sam Feels Better Now

"This beautiful little picture book is the ideal guide for a series of therapy sessions that will focus the child's attention on positives and help to deal with the traumatic memories"
-- Bob Rich, PhD., AnxietyAndDepression-help.com

"Sam Feels Better Now" provides the child and therapist a safe metaphor for exploring trauma issues. The story teaches children that coming to therapy can be a good thing."
--JoAnna White, Ed.D., Professor and Chair Department of Counseling and Psychological Services, Georgia State Univ.

Visit the author online: www.JillOsborne.com

Book #2 in the Growing with Love Series

From Loving Healing Press www.LovingHealing.com

"Redefining what's possible for healing mind and spirit since 2003."

Reviews

Sam goes to see Ms. Carol because he's been frightened. It's caused him to not be eating or sleeping properly. As you go through the book and Same and Ms. Carol talk, your child is able to draw and interact as Sam would be in the therapist's office.

This book points out the importance of security and feeling safe, of having a regular daily routine and how to talk to others about things.

This book even allows you to draw and understand more fully the range of feelings that you can go through. Many of these emotions can be especially difficult for a younger child to understand.

This was a really great book on further exploration of feelings. My six year old really enjoyed it and likes it even more because he got to color and draw.

Reviewed on 10/01/2010 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Mystee Blackwood

Sam Feels Better Now! An Interactive Story for Children, written by Jill Osborne and illustrated by Kevin Collier, is meant to help children dealing with traumatic memories. Ms. Carol, a special therapist, walks Sam step by step through identifying and dealing with a scary thing that happened to him.

This book began as a project for a traumatology course that the author took while doing graduate work in professional counseling at Georgia State University.

The book can be used by therapists to help children go through the process with Sam, in a non-threatening way since it is in the third person. It is interactive in that there are pages for the child to draw and identify what happened, how it makes him feel, and how to deal with it. It is recommended for ages 4-10.

The colors and illustrations are appealing; Esmé, my two-year-old, sat through several readings of the book while looking at the pictures. The vocabulary is simple to understand, too. There is not much of a story line or character development to evaluate; it is just a step-by-step description of the therapy process.

There were a couple of minor punctuation and grammatical issues in the book copy I received for review.

I don’t feel qualified to evaluate the therapy process described in the book, as I don’t have much background in that area.

Overall, this looks like a useful tool for a therapist to use in helping children who have dealt with trauma.

Reviewed on 08/14/2009 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Jane Maritz

Sam Feels Better Now! : An Interactive Story for Children is a workbook that therapists can use to help children who have experienced a traumatic event. Its 8X10 format is very attractive and allows for easy manipulation on the part of a child.

Through Sam's story, children get involved in helping him feel better by using drawings, play and storytelling activities. Thus, they inadvertently help themselves using this safe metaphor. These are excellent therapy tools for children. As a former psychiatric child counselor and special education technician having worked in schools and various institutions, I have used both art and play therapies. These venues give powerful evidence of what is going on in a child’s life. A child will tell things to a puppet that it would otherwise never tell an adult. In this way, this book can be a very helpful tool to assist the therapist in introducing these therapies.

Since this is an interactive book, though, I found the story to be too simple (the whole text would fill only ¾ of a page) and could be elaborated with additional text and dialogue. The therapist guide included in the back of the book states that this story is appropriate for children ages 4-10, however I think it only appropriate for ages 4-7. The text and illustrations are fine for a young child (my 5-year-old liked the book) but an older child (8 and over) would prefer text suitable for their age group and perhaps cartoon strips or more complex illustrations. I read the book to my 8-year-old daughter who said, “Mom, this book is babyish.” I explained the purpose of the book, which elicited a keener response on her part. She then made the suggestion that rather than just colour the feelings (an exercise on p.24) she would want to draw them too.

The guide also states that this book “incorporates expressive techniques and play therapy techniques…to assist the child with learning various coping skills…”. This is where I feel the book could be improved by not only stating these techniques but also incorporating them into greater detail throughout the story by illustrating how they could be done. The six sections of the book are too short and general and could be developed further. For example: How do Sam, his mom, and the therapist make a routine to help him eat and sleep? How could Sam approach the list of people he trusts when he doesn’t feel safe or happy? What are the relaxing techniques the therapist shows Sam to help him feel better?

Further elaboration of these techniques could be included with the therapist notes found in the guide section, as well. At the price of $24.95, this book needs to show its worth by giving the therapist more than a basic guide of techniques familiar to any experienced therapist who works with children. In addition, since this book is for use by professionals, it needs to be professionally edited. Because of the large print and few sentences per page, the several punctuation errors I found were blaringly evident.

Overall, I found this book to be a useful tool that with improvement can become an excellent program for any therapist or teacher involved with children who’ve suffered psychological trauma.

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Sam Feels Better Now! An Interactive Story for Children

Reviews

Reviewed on 10/01/2010 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Mystee Blackwood

Reviewed on 08/14/2009 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Jane Maritz

Reviewed on 07/16/2009 by ReviewTheBook.com Member Laura Fabiani

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