Because young children lack the framework of conventions and language that allows older people to express their feelings and emotions, it is easy to leap to the false assumption that they do not share these feelings.How often, for example, do we hear it said of the bereaved and silent child that “He doesn’t understand yet”?

Good children’s writing can provide an opportunity for children to build this framework - to rehearse feelings and to explore the way that human beings relate to one another. Both Relationships and Understanding Feelings, therefore, take eight children’s stories and provide, for eachof them, ideas and differen-tiated photocopiable resource material that will help teachers to explore with pupils the important emotions and feel-ings that drive the stories along.

Books that feature in Relationships include Alfie Gives a Hand by Shirley Hughes; So Much by Trish Cooke and Helen Oxenbury, and The Tunnel by Anthony Browne.

Understanding Feelings includes the stories Doggerby Shirley Hughes, Willy and Hugh by Anthony Browne, and At the Crossroads by Rachel Isadora.

These two publications are a useful resource - and a timely one, given the current emphasis on literacy - for key stage 1 teachers looking for ways to link children’s literature into areas of personal, moral, social and cultural education.