Introduction
I love children's books. I read them with my children or on my own. There are many beautiful books that bring joy to our heart, nurture our imagination, bring food for the soul and the mind and inspire us. This is one of them.
Mr. Rogers is one of our favourite people in the world. Below you have the transcript of the video I recorded with the review on the book and part of our story with it.
How We Came To Know of Mr. Rogers and His Show
“Hello, I am Andrea Petrut, founder of Living With A Healing Heart. And now I want to share with you a book that I highly recommend, a biography for children: "Fred's Big Feelings: The Life and Legacy of Mr. Rogers" by Laura Renauld and illustrated by Brigette Barrager.
I am a home educator living in Canada originally from Romania. We are a multilingual family. And because I love emotional literacy and think about it, I always did my best as this is part of what I'm doing in my work, and also because I know this is very important for children and it's missing especially in boys, to find ways to grow, develop their emotional intelligence.
And after coming to Canada, I learned from my English friends, my Canadian/American friends about Fred Rogers, who was not known in the Romania, by the way. I watched his videos alone and interviews and then I watched with my children and one of them really likes him very much as you will actually feel.
The Book
This book is illustrated very well. It's nice and simple.It has all the main things about Fred Rogers and his work. It speaks about the most important moments in his life in which many children can recognize themselves. It has very memorable parts of his life and I really loved, like one of my sons, that it represents the impact television, especially those shows that are stressful, come with negative emotions, etc. affect children and then we can see how he did it which is awesome.
And here if I can I will show you what one of my sons said about the book so I will try to share with you so you can at least see on screen the words.
What My Son Said About Emotions and The Picture About His Show
Andrea petrut
... in here, that are watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, instead of feeling disturbed and pranked, they feel loved and important. So unlike any other TV show, they feel important.
-Okay, let's see
-Make this day special just the way you are.
-You think this is his message at the end of the book? Okay, let's see.
-That's at least a guess because that's how that's also a thing that is empowering, too.
-Okay, let's see.
Yeah, so that's exactly what you feel in this book. It's an empowering book. It's empowering for children. It's empowering for adults. It's important for everyone.
And throughout the book, with beautiful illustrations, you can see the most important moments in his shows. Especially this one that I found out only through an American friend I didn't know about this episode where he really shocked I think and also supported the... I would say the non discrimination between black people and white people. And he "allowed" a black person to share a bathing moment. It's amazing!
The Change For Funding For His TV Show
One of the most important moments for an adult and also for a child depending on the age and how they can think about it is when he went to Capitol Hill and there's a 6-7 min interview about it as you can see online.
I really recommend you to watch it. It's a nice language and for some children it does May 1st, 1969. This is 6min15sec interview video that I will highly recommend. I love how he speaks and I love the ending, the response received.
Conclusion
Throughout the book with great illustrations, short text and compelling words, and beautiful images, you can actually see his life, his impact and the best of it all. And this is the best biography for children about Mr. Rogers.
I also saw the movie that they made where his wife was also there. So I really loved him very much.
My son, my youngest son actually told me about him... he would love to have a friend like Mr. Rogers and if he were alive he would have wanted to see him and that is very sad to hear. Because a man like him is very rare, honestly.
And I hope we are going to raise boys and children who can become themselves and open up and allow themselves to have feelings. They will feel safe in their own environment, at school, at work, at home and outside the community to be themselves.
We can all make it happen with people who left a legacy and books like that.
If you have any recommendations about biographies or stories of people who inspire you, please share in the comments on my blog on YouTube, wherever you can. My website is andreapetru.ca. There you can see that I have a blog. I will do some reviews from time to time. It's mainly for adults but I speak to parents also. So I'm sharing what helped me as a parent. Much love! Thank you for watching!”
