Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Expressing your feelings with help of the Big Five
EVERYBODY feels big feelings at times, and sometimes they can be hard to express, especially for the little ones. But worry not, Game Ranger Grace and the Big Five book series helps children to understand and effectively express their feelings.
The book uses South Africa’s famous wild animals to narrate and distinguish differences between the emotions. The first title, Riziki the Angry Rhinoceros, was printed in 2019, followed by Batu the Fearful Buffalo, and most recently, Leylani the Disgusted Leopard. Each of the colourful 28-page books dedicates one of the five primary emotions to one identified animal.
In the new edition, Leylani doesn’t like to eat meat. The other leopards find this strange and tease her. With a little help from Game Ranger Grace, everyone realises that it’s okay to be different and that Leylani should feel accepted for who she is, and other leopards open up about their dislikes, too.
The self-published author, Tamsyn Alfino, who is also a school clinical social worker, explained: “My books are different in that they teach children to use new feeling words to describe emotions they already experience but cannot yet name, like helping them recognise that ‘annoyed’ is not the same as ‘rejected’, and ‘embarrassed’ is not the same as ‘sad’.
“My books aim to do just this, by expanding the emotional vocabulary of children as a starting point and introducing them to the importance of emotional intelligence in a fun way.”
The books also contain discussion questions, word search and colouring pages for parents and educators to facilitate conversation and reflection after reading.
Illustrator Amber Noussis added a spark by using bigger images.
Pam Hoffman, director of literacy, learning and curriculum at Otto Foundation, said: “We have two copies of the Game Ranger Grace series in each of our four school libraries in District Six. The children find the emotional content engaging and relatable.”