Feelings Book Series [1987-88]

In the late 1980's, a series of books were published with the intention of focusing on the importance of recognizing both positive and negative feelings. Each of the books, set in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, opened with the same message to parents from Fred Rogers:

Learning to recognize feelings and finding appropriate ways to express them are important steps in any child's growth. Pretending can be a big help to children as they work to understand more about feelings, but grownups sometimes need to clarify for children just where pretending stops and reality begins. That's one reason why, in both our storybooks and television programs, we keep the Neighborhood of Make-Believe separate from our "real" neighborhood. In Make-Believe, we pretend about certain things that couldn't happen in real life...and make it clear that that's what we're doing.

Each book in this series tells a story about feelings. Some of those feelings are happy ones and some aren't -- jealosy and anger, for instance. Strong feelings can be hard to talk about, but pretending about them can make it easier. We hope that these stories will help you talk about feelings in your family. Though the stories are only make-believe, the feelings are real, and children need to know that having feelings of all kinds is a very real part of what makes us human beings.

Over the next several days, we will be looking at four of the books from this series: When Monsters Seem Real, If We Were All the Same, No One Can Ever Take Your Place, and Wishes Don't Make Things Come True.