Breathe

Description

I was super excited to read Breathe, as I love yoga and meditation. I was familiar with many of the breathing techniques described in the book, but not all of them. Unfortunately, I felt there needed to be more details for each of the exercises the mom suggests to her son for calming down. Those details are found at the end of the book for parents or caregivers, but just as I was getting ready to try one of them out, immediately another breathing exercise was being thrown at me. It was not relaxing!

Even worse than that, they chose to do the book as a conversation between a mother and her son. I found that choice to be awkward, and the son’s dialogue was especially unbelievable. For example, when the mom is suggesting cobra pose from yoga, the boy says, “The venomous snakes that lift their heads up to attack?” and the mother responds, “Exactly!”.

It is, however, a nice collection of a wide range of techniques, including everything from making calming jars (glitter snow globes), yoga poses, and vocalization. Its greatest strength is the lovely collage pictures. I especially loved the first picture, where the boy is shown with a dialogue bubble that is full of scribbles indicating how jumbled he feels. I think its best use would be in a classroom where only one or two techniques were tried at a time rather than sitting down to read it as a story.