The Happiest Kid

Author: Sarah Bagley Steele
Illustrator: Elsa Pui Si Lo and Clarice Yunyi Cai
Publisher: Yeehoo Press

As her family knows well, Sally is the happiest child. She wakes up every morning to see the beautiful sun shining down on her, full of optimism for the day ahead. Then a few things don’t go very well for Sally. She knocks over a toy brick tower at school and is worried that she’s disappointed her classmates. A letter from a friend that has moved away usually fills her with joy, but that day it just makes her feel the distance between them more strongly.

She wakes up on the following morning and notices that the bright sun that reliably greets her has been replaced with a gloomy grey cloud. She’s not sure why it’s there, but is certain she doesn’t like it and feels rather ashamed of it, and goes to great lengths to try to hide the cloud from her parents, teacher and classmates. Inevitably, the more she tries to hide the cloud, the more it seems to grow, until it become so big and heavy that she feels totally overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. The turning point comes when a boy at school notices her cloud and tells her that he has one too from time to time. Sally finds the courage to be curious and playful with her cloud, and allows herself to loosen her grip on it. She stops trying to hide it from her friends and family, and as she does, the feeling of sadness starts to fade.

The cloud metaphor that author Sarah Bagley Steele has chosen to convey Sally’s sadness works perfectly, providing a beautifully simple and non-threatening way to start a conversation with a young child about big feelings and how to process and share them. The narrative has been carefully created to be both engaging and accessible for young children. A team of two artists (Elsa Pui Si Lo and Clarice Yunyi Cai) has created very appealing charcoal and ink illustrations, which skilfully bring Sally to life and reflect her changing emotions well.

The messages we found in this book:

Acknowledgement:

Sometimes it’s tricky to work out why you feel sad, and where the sadness has come from.
Even very resilient, buoyant children can feel sad from time to time.
The more you try to hide big feelings or push them away, the harder they are to manage. Sally’s attempts to ignore her grey cloud only made it grow.
Children often find it difficult to admit to (and talk about) difficult emotions. Sally chose not to tell her teacher that having to paint her feelings was troubling her, falsely believing that if she just kept her cloud hidden, it would go away.
It can sometimes be challenging to live up to the expectation of others. Sally is an extremely thoughtful girl who is very tuned in to the feelings of others. She worries about upsetting or disappointing her friends and family. She’s aware that she is perceived as the ‘happy girl’ and this makes it more difficult for her to admit that she’s feeling sad. She was keen not to ‘mess up her friends’ fun’ by telling them how sad she felt. She feels ashamed of her cloud and is anxious that the boy will laugh at her if she talks about it.
When you go through a period of sadness and low mood, things that usually make you feel buoyant may have a less positive effect. When Sally received a letter from her best friend, she missed her rather than feeling happy about receiving it.

Guidance:

All emotions are perfectly normal, and labelling them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is not helpful. Once Sally accepted her grey cloud of sadness and stopped trying to hide it or run away from it, she was able to explore her feelings, process them, and move on.
People may not react the way that you think they will. Sally thought that the boy would laugh if he found out about her cloud and her friends would be disappointed in her for knocking down the tower. Neither of these reactions actually happened.
It is normal (and to be expected) that some days will be happy, others sad, and most will be a mixture of both.

Hope & Inspiration:

By the end of the story, Sally successfully learns to accept her feelings of sadness and manages to open up to her friends and family about how she feels. Everyone is supportive. The book concludes with Sally realising that even the happiest kids feel sad sometimes.