Learning to Be a Good Friend
A Guidebook for Kids
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Learning to Be a Good Friend allows adults to show kids how to cultivate friendship. It discusses behaviors that foster friendships, as well as those that drive friends away. It illustrates the pitfalls of peer pressure, and what to do when you can't find a friend or have lost your best friend.
Fit Can Be Fun!
A Kid's Guide to Healthy Choices
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
People come in all shapes and sizes. That's the way God makes us. How boring would it be if we all looked the same? Some things we can't change, like how tall we are or the color of our eyes. Some things we can, like how we treat other people or how we take care of our bodies. This book is about taking care of our bodies so they work the best they can. You'll find that life is a lot more fun when you have a body that works well.
Getting Out of a Stress Mess!
A Guide for Kids
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Here's a book that gives some of the simplest advice ever to kids experiencing stress: Be yourself-be a kid! Some stress is natural as children face developmental challenges, contends the author, a school and community counselor. But throw in societal pressure to be an "all-star," life changes, and family stress-and kids can end up in a "stress mess." This little guidebook will make a difference.
It's Not Fair!
Knowing What's Right, What's Not, and What You Can Do about It
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
When it comes to fairness, every kid knows that a parent can't break a candy bar perfectly in half, for sharing. We grown-ups also know what it's like not being treated fairly, and we know that much unfairness springs from such things as greed, or hatred, or anger, or prejudice, or misunderstanding, or even from the ways of Nature. But using these "big words" to explain unfairness to children will probably not work. And so, in this book, author Linus Mundy, offers words and examples that children will understand and relate to. Our children are ready to understand more about this big, wide world we live in. And they are ready to make it better for everyone, by making it more just, more fair.
Time-Out from Technology
A Kid's Guide to Unplugging and Having Fun
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
By establishing reasonable limits and nurturing an open dialogue with our children, we can help them become discerning and thoughtful consumers of digital media. We can implement parental controls and passwords to help set limits for children's time online. More important, though, is setting good examples by mindfully unplugging ourselves from the digital space and spending time offline with our kids, providing them with opportunities to have fun and be stimulated by real life experiences. This balance will help them become smart digital consumers who develop good habits and create healthy relationships.
Help Is Here for Facing Fear!
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
The world can be a scary place-especially when just about everybody is bigger than you and so many experiences are brand-new. Childhood fear is normal. But if it starts to interfere with everyday life, it becomes a problem for a child-and caring adults. This delightfully illustrated book gives simple, concrete advice for dealing with childhood fears and worries. Kids can learn to live full of confidence, free of fear. Help is here!
Growing Into a Family
A Kid's Guide to Living in a Blended Family
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Families blend together for a variety of reasons. Widowed or divorced parents choose to remarry. An ailing or elderly relative can no longer live alone and moves in with his son's family. A family chooses to adopt a child. Economic circumstances force family members to combine households. Regardless of why it happens, creating a blended family is a process of transition that takes time, patience, humor, compassion, and a whole lot of conversation. In Growing Into a Family, author Cynthia Geisen guides children and the caring adults in their lives through the many questions and mixed feelings that blended families face. In the end, it is love, compassion, persistence, and a large dollop of humor that are really the tools that will help young readers find peace and joy in their family's new realities.
Right and Wrong and Being Strong
A Kid's Guide
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Kids aren't born knowing right from wrong. But, somehow, over the years, we hope to help them become caring, responsible, respectful adults. This practical how-to book for kids is an invaluable tool in guiding children on the journey of moral development. Through concrete language and interactive examples, it addresses such topics as honesty, peer pressure, and how to tell right from wrong. Even more, it shows kids how to go beyond doing right to doing good.
A Kid's Guide to Keeping Family First
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
In these hectic times, kids can become overwhelmed with activities that are a distraction from home and family. This 32-page book can help keep it all in perspective, as well as provide suggestions on how to keep family time fun.
Forgiving
Is Smart for Your Heart
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
We are a world in need of forgiveness. In our local and world communities, we see violence and escalating conflict. Author Carol Ann Morrow hopes to instill the virtue of forgiveness in young hearts. Young readers learn, along with little elfin friends, that sometimes we all need another chance.
What REALLY Matters?
A Kid's Guide to What's Really Important in Life
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
One of the most important gifts we can offer a child is passing along to them the values that will help them form their own sense of what is important-a sense of what REALLY matters. In What Really Matters? A Kid's Guide to What's Really Important in Life, author John Mark Falkenhain, O.S.B., helps both children and adults reflect on those things in life which are most important, especially respect, relationships, and love.
Making Christmas Count
A Kid's Guide to Keeping the Season Sacred
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Kids don't need to be told that Christmas "counts." They are generally tuned in to the excitement and anticipation! And yet, children can be among the first to forget what it is about the season that really counts. Much of this may have to do with what our culture-and we ourselves-teach and practice. This little illustrated book communicates a message about making Christmas count in all its facets and flavors; it is a book about recognizing the deepest "reasons for the season."
When Mom or Dad Dies
A Book of Comfort for Kids
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
When Mom or Dad dies, children grieve deeply. But we can show our care and love for them by encouraging them to share their feelings of sorrow and loss. We can give them the time and space they need to adjust and listen to-if not answer-their questions. We can let them know that they can heal and live a happy, full life of faith, hope, and love-the kind of life their Mom or Dad would want for them. We can listen to their hurt and respond in a loving and supportive way.
Letting Go of Stress
A Kid's Guide to Putting Worry in Its Place
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Children aren't immune to stress. Kids are especially prone to feel fear before stressful events in their lives. Family, school, and team sports' schedules have been crammed into their daily activities so extensively that many children are robbed of their free recreational "growth" time, and an alarming number of kids are experiencing high levels of stress because of this. All of these realities can lead to our children having the same kinds of fears and concerns we adults have, especially about things they often have no control over. In this invaluable book, author J. S. Jackson helps children explore attitudes and ideas to try and diminish some of the stress they feel in their lives.
When Your Pet Dies
A Healing Handbook for Kids
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
A child will never forget a beloved pet, or the day it died. And the sadness that follows is true grief. This little elfin guide to good grief validates your child's sadness-the necessary first step for healing. It acknowledges feelings that are new, confusing, and frightening. And it offers creative ideas for easing the sting of grief and memorializing a lost pet. A touching tribute to the love between a child and pet . . . and a compassionate guide to handling this loss with gentleness and sensitivity.
God Is My Friend
A Kid's Guide to God
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Everyone needs a best friend-someone who knows you and loves you just the way you are. Someone who hugs you when you're sad and celebrates when you're happy. Best friends like to spend time with each other. Best friends stay in touch and help each other out. This book introduces children to their very own Best Friend-God. Through childlike images and charming illustrations, it helps young believers to come to know God as an everyday, everywhere, anytime kind of Friend. A down-to-earth primer for children (and adults too!) on God.
Standing Up to Peer Pressure
A Guide to Being True to You
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Wanting to be accepted by peers is a natural part of children's social development. Yet kids can be overly influenced by what "friends" think of them or urge them to do. Through simple language and engaging illustrations, this book explains the concept of peer pressure. It encourages a solid sense of self-identity-or "elf-identity"-and teaches kids how to say "No."
I Don't Want to Go to Church!
Turning the Struggle into a Celebration
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
This book is written for younger, school-age children for whom going to church doesn't always make sense, particularly when it competes with things they'd rather do like sleeping in or playing. Younger children don't have the cognitive abilities in place yet to understand many of the abstract ideas that go along with faith and religion. For these young people, the experience of church often needs to be more concrete, story-based, or tied to everyday experiences and relationships. Through insightful text and enchanting illustrations, this book helps make the experience more concrete and meaningful, and even something to look forward to rather than resist.
When Your Grandparent Dies
A Child's Guide to Good Grief
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Losing a grandparent is often a child's first experience with grief. The ordeal can be as bewildering as it is painful. Explaining what happens from a child's-eye view, the little elves in this book depict the difficult days before, after, and beyond a grandparent's death. They explore the meaning of death and heaven, as well as how to stay close in spirit with a grandparent who has died. With ideas for action and questions for discussion, this creative guide will help you help your grieving child to create comforting memories and find closure.
A New Baby Is Coming!
A Guide for a Big Brother or Sister
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
A new baby's arrival is an occasion of excitement and anticipation. Yet for a young child, it can be cause for bewilderment and distress. Hand-in-hand with endearing elf characters, author Emily Menendez-Aponte shows the way to help a child welcome the new arrival into the family with open arms!
Playing Fair, Having Fun
A Kid's Guide to Sports and Games
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Sports and games help kids grow strong in mind and body. And they teach kids about life-about competitive pressure, the time crunch for families, and the risks of computer and internet games to consider. Share this book with the kids you care about, so that the games they play will be fun, fair, and life-giving. 32 pages.
Worry, Worry, Go Away!
A Kid's Book about Worry and Anxiety
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
All kids experience worries. Helping children understand what worry is, where it comes from, and how to challenge it is the first step in overcoming anxieties. The little elves in this book help children to learn to STOP, to THINK TWICE, and to see their worries for what they are. By presenting new ways of evaluating and overcoming the psychological, spiritual, and physical dimensions of fear, this creative book will help your child find the confidence and courage to say "Worry, Worry, Go Away!"
Sad Isn't Bad
A Good-grief Guidebook for Kids Dealing with Loss
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Here is the book that Elf-help fans everywhere were asking for... a book to help children grieve in healthy ways. This friendly and loving guide is loaded with positive, life-affirming help to coping with loss as a child.
Saying Good-bye, Saying Hello...
When Your Family Is Moving
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
We all have moved sometime in our lives, and we remember some of the feelings we had. In moving with children, one should help them feel safe and secure among all the hustle and bustle and the many changes ahead. This enchanting guide will help children recognize the fun and excitement of a move, while recognizing the fears of new places and people, and the sadness of good-byes. Who knows. . . in helping children make a happy adjustment, you might just help yourself, as well!
What Happens When Someone Dies?
A Child's Guide to Death and Funerals
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
The author of the top-selling Sad Isn't Bad: A Good-Grief Guidebook for Kids Dealing With Loss here helps children as they first experience the reality-and the mystery-of death and funerals. She carefully explains to children how we celebrate the life of a departed one through both sadness and joy. A sampling of the titles of the various booklet sections: Why Do People Die? Does It Hurt to Die? What Happens at the Funeral Home? What Will It Be Like at the Church Service? What Happens at the Cemetery? What Can I Do About My Sad Feelings? What Will Heaven Be Like? When Will Everything Be OK Again? Through her experience as a counselor, teacher, mother, and accomplished children's author, Michaelene Mundy here offers a loving and truly helpful guide for kids.
Learning about Virtues
A Guide to Making Good Decisions
by Juliette Garesché Dages
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
This book introduces the concept and basic vocabulary of virtues. It helps children to recognize and label the behaviors which they are striving to develop. When a child attains a virtue, that trait will become almost habitual for them. But it isn't always easy. Life produces many challenges, and today's culture often seems to oppose virtue. However, through faith, example, and practicing individual virtues, a child will keeping growing through adulthood, planting more seeds of God's goodness along the way. We hope you have fun introducing virtues to the children in your life. This book is just the start. Be creative, and don't forget to catch your children being good! Praise their every effort toward goodness and God-likeness.
Happy to Be Me!
A Kid's Book about Self-esteem
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Helping children develop good self-esteem means helping them simply be themselves. It means letting them know how loved and cherished they are-just because of who they are. The elfin friends in this colorful book lead the young reader through a process of self-discovery: exploring uniqueness, building a healthy self-image, and preparing for challenging situations. Every child in the world is special, gifted, and wonderful. And each one deserves to feel "happy to be me"! This honest and upbeat book will bring real help and understanding.
Mad Isn't Bad
A Child's Book about Anger
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
You can be angry-and still be good. That's normal. Through understanding what anger feels like and what triggers it, we can learn and teach healthy ways to handle it. Mad Isn't Bad offers kids a positive and honest view of anger-and what to do with it.
When Bad Things Happen
A Guide to Help Kids Cope
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Truly bad things happen in life. And while we cannot shelter children from every hurt and harm, we can reassure them that they, like the little elves in these pages, will always be loved and cared for. We can teach children the skills needed for coping with life's biggest challenges and changes. And we can restore children's trust that life, after all, is good.
You Are You, I Am Me
Understanding Diversity
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
In You Are You, I Am Me, author Cynthia Geisen helps children reflect on how we can appreciate, and even celebrate, the diversity in the world around us while also helping them to recognize those things that we all share.
When Someone You Love Has Cancer
A Guide to Help Kids Cope
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Few things affect a family's everyday life like the presence of an illness like cancer. Whether it's a grandparent, another family member, a teacher or neighbor or friend, children especially experience confusion, fear and misunderstanding. This book will help kids cope with the presence of cancer in their lives. Book includes 14 wonderful, full-color, full-page illustrations, and some 40 helpful pointers written expressly for children 4-12. A rare and excellent resource!
A Book of Prayers for All Your Cares
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Here is a wonderful book of psychology and spirituality-all in one. It shows children that God is someone we can share our every feeling with, and one we can "go to" in our own simple words. The author and illustrator cover a wide range of themes-from praying about one's anger or sadness to praying about being afraid or bored.
Respect
Dare to Care, Share, and Be Fair!
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Childhood is the time for virtues to be taught-or, more accurately, "caught." And the virtue of respect is one sorely needed in a world more and more diverse, congested, and interdependent. Just what is respect? "It's a good way to be-and a way to be good," say the authors of this helpful, yet entertaining children's book. "It's a way to care about others, ourselves, and our world. When we have the virtue of respect, we try to treat people and our whole world with extra love and kindness."
When Mom and Dad Divorce
A Kid's Resource
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Divorce isn't easy on anyone, least of all children. When Mom and Dad Divorce helps gently guide children through this painful passage.
Bye-bye, Bully!
A Kid's Guide for Dealing with Bullies
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Aided by little elfin characters, this helpful handbook delves into the who, what, and why's of bullying-and, most importantly, the how's of thwarting bullies. Kids will learn nonviolent ways to assert and protect themselves-and when to ask for adult help. Together, kids and caring grown-ups can banish bullies in schools and neighborhoods.
Feeling Bad, Getting Better
A Kid's Guide to Illness and Injury
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Illness is distressing for anybody, but it's especially disturbing for children. This book escorts the sick child through the strange, scary, and often lonely world of illness and hospitalization. Empathizing with the confusing feelings and questions sick children often have, it offers comfort and understanding. The little elves that populate its pages present creative ways for sick kids to have fun, stay connected with family and friends, and help themselves to heal.
It's Great to Be Grateful!
A Kid's Guide to Being Thankful
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
Children can come to take so many things for granted. But teaching your children gratitude need not be difficult. This book will provide real help as parents, grandparents, teachers, and other caring adults try to pass on to children necessary lessons of appreciation and thankfulness. Author Michaelene Mundy reminds little readers that we all need to be more thankful for the things and people we already have, and that we have a loving God and loving people in our lives. These are the best gifts and blessings.
Keeping School Cool!
A Kid's Guide to Handling School Problems
Part of the Elf-help Books for Kids series
From the end of August until the first part of June, our children spend more of their waking hours at school than at home. And while elementary school problems may sometimes seem trivial compared to our adult worries, we need to remember that our children's problems can be just as gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking as any adult's. This thoughtfully written book covers everything from homework to getting along with others, dealing with teachers and feeling safe at school. Author Michaelene Mundy reassures and teaches as she tackles the topics most important to young students.