Little Aiden – A Feelings Book for Toddlers by Albert Choi

Little Aiden – A Feelings Book for Toddlers by Albert Choi
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Children’s (0 – 6 y.o.), Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Have you always wanted to introduce emotions and feelings to your toddler, but don’t have the right book on hand? Or perhaps you have found a few books on emotions and feelings, but they aren’t enough to keep your toddler engaged throughout the entire book!

As Little Aiden explores and experiences different feelings and emotions, he shows other toddlers in his own little way the importance of expressing feelings. There are different emotions and feelings shown in Little Aiden including, but not limited to the following:

“Sometimes Aiden feels happy.”
“Sometimes Aiden feels frustrated.”
“Sometimes Aiden feels angry.”

Using Aiden’s simple, repetitive style, you can teach your toddler that all their emotions and feelings are okay (not just the positive ones).

Through engaging and vivid illustrations, Little Aiden’s reactions will bring joy and laughter to the entire family.

It’s never too early to promote good mental health.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about this picture book was that every scene appeared to occur over the course of a single day. Some days are a rollercoaster of emotions even for adults, and toddlers have much less experience handling that than grownups do. It was also interesting to me to see how the main character’s mood in one moment was often connected to the ones just before or after it. Aiden had good reasons for his reactions, and I enjoyed following him through a typical day for a mischievous kid his age.

I loved seeing all of the extra space Mr. Choi left for adult readers to explain things to the toddlers and preschoolers this was written for. The illustrations and text provided the basics, but all of it could be easily modified for more specific conversations about certain emotions as well if desired. This is exactly the sort of flexibility I was hoping to discover in a story on this topic.

It was refreshing to see every emotion treated identically. Whether Aiden’s feelings were negative or positive, the reader was always reassured that it’s okay to feel that way. I grew up in a time when some people were expected to hide certain emotions and not show any signs that they were angry or sad. Teaching kids that it’s perfectly fine to acknowledge how they truly feel is such an important part of raising people who will become emotionally healthy adults, and I’m thrilled to see this change in society.

Little Aiden – A Feelings Book for Toddlers was perfect.