It's So Difficult
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A school day can be so overwhelming: so many people, so many noises, so many things to remember. Grown-ups say it'll get easier with time, but even saying hello is incredibly hard. Thank goodness for comforts like math, for anything that can relax a restless mind. Maybe this time a few words will come out at last…
An empathetic look at anxiety and overstimulation, It's So Difficult follows a child throughout the challenging routines of a single day. Even the smallest step forward can be an enormous triumph.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"When I leave the house, everything is so difficult for me. I feel a prickling that won't go away, and every step I take is a triumph." Based on Guridi's experiences as an educator, the author-illustrator details the internality of a largely nonverbal child narrator experiencing a school day. As the white child walks out the front door, rides a bus, attends class, and heads back home, earnest first-person lines render experiences of sensory sensitivity and overload, including around a shouting figure and "greetings, laughter, fathers and mothers saying goodbye." Calming actions are also detailed, involving counting, calculating, noticing the city's shapes and colors, and taking the space the child needs ("My mother always tells me not to rush myself"). Through-out, scratchy outlines and mixed-media art foregrounds evoke the figure's encounters, as in the much-reproduced image of one open-mouthed, speaking face expressing a relentless barrage of sound, making for a perceptive portrait of one child's experience. Ages 5–9.
