My Quiet Place
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
For anyone who struggles with sensory overload, this soothing picture book offers a touchstone of understanding and encouraging guidance for finding your own quiet place—whenever and wherever it’s needed.
In our loud and busy world, finding a moment or place to think, dream, or rest quietly can be challenging. My Quiet Place highlights one child’s difficulty in dealing with the volume and action that swirl around her as she moves from the serenity of dawn to the bustle of breakfast, the cacophony of street sounds, the jostling of playground fun, and the everythingness of people’s lives packed together in a crowded bus or market. With focus and determination, she identifies all the ways she can find quiet when she needs it and even share it when someone else needs a bit, too.
Highlighting a common symptom of anxiety, depression, and ADHD, this compassionate and empowering book serves as a much-needed resource for children, families, and teachers. Light-hearted and relatable, it will make neurodiverse kids feel heard and understood and let kids who don’t experience this phenomenon hear and understand them.
MANAGING ANXIETY: Sensory overload is one of the many symptoms that can come with anxiety, particularly for people on the autism spectrum or with attention deficit disorder, and can present in big and small ways. Journeying through the character’s day, from quiet morning to peak challenges and back to a gentle night’s end, can help young readers recognize their own patterns and identify ways to find their self-soothing quiet.
GIVING LANGUAGE: It can be hard to identify sensory overload if you’re not the one suffering from it, and hard to talk about if you are. This story offers a wonderful opportunity for understanding, and a welcome chance for kids to see themselves represented.
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: We’re all overwhelmed! This book will feel relatable to people who are neurodiverse and those who aren’t, giving everyone a chance to see aspects of themselves in these pages.
CLASSROOM RESOURCE: With its careful representation of neurodiverse behavior, this story makes an excellent jumping off point for teachers to spark dialogue, understanding, and empathy.
Perfect for:
Parents, grandparents, and educators
Neurodivergent thinkers
A reassuring read for kids with varying levels of social anxiety
Anyone feeling a bit overwhelmed
Readers who enjoy the award-winning A Friend For Henry series, Too Much!: An Overwhelming Day, and My Brain Is a Race Car
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A youth describes methods for handling sound-based sensory overload in a down-to-earth picture book that's bookended by breathwork models. Plain-spoken narration readily acknowledges, "It can feel overwhelming when your day is filled with sounds of action," before proposing a manageable-feeling solution: retreating to a "quiet place." At home, that looks like "the tiny, tucked-away space behind the couch" or a cozy closet corner. During a day out, too, the protagonist finds ways to self-regulate ("Sometimes my quiet place isn't a place at all," the speaker suggests, encouraging a focus on sensations including a "steady hand to hold" or "something peaceful to watch"). Pattern-filled digital artwork aptly indicates stimuli with reverberating red lines, while the brown-skinned protagonist's facial expressions and body language communicate moments of discomfort. By contrast, the subject's mouth takes on a gentle upturn in the aftermath of soothing activities, which, the book's end emphasizes, can be shared with others. At once logistical and sensitive, Mikai's account empowers with emulatable tools. Ages 5–8.
