This Is Me: Getting to Know Yourself and Others Better

Haraštová offers an overview of different personality traits in this extended social-emotional reference. An opening chapter offers key definitions (of characteristic, ability, emotion) while establishing the book’s live-and-let-live tone: “Everybody’s different!” The 10 chapters that follow each center on fictional children (“This is Fatimah”) and two characteristics (“Sometimes Fatimah is unruly”/ “Sometimes Fatimah is energetic”). Sidebars further clarify the nature of the traits while gently describing some of their positive and negative effects. Text boxes prompt reflection with the goal of self-awareness (“How do you know you’re being unruly?”). Contextualizing examples occasionally veer into stereotype (“Two chatty ladies were babbling”) and pearl-clutching (about a child desiring cake for dinner: “Just imagine what might have happened if she had succeeded!”). Elsewhere, though, there’s a subtlety to the pairings’ distinctions (shyness and thoughtfulness, stubbornness and perseverance), which are illustrated in painterly depictions by Kobern that include figures portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 6–9. (Aug.)