Books for children

This clever picture book shows younger readers the charming friendship between Cyril, a squirrel and Pat, who isn’t. Their friendship is powerful and shows children that it’s worth sticking up for those you care about. With vivid illustrations of life, leaves and flowers, an unexpected world is brought to life, and it’s the one that younger readers will delight in exploring every time they visit a park.

Following a series of forest animal friends through their everyday lives, these stories examine why we do the things we do and how we feel about our actions. The brevity, clarity and high quality of these short stories also make them useful texts to study in literacy lessons, particularly in terms of viewpoint and writing styles.

Panther feels out of place and takes an adventure in the jungle to overcome challenges, conquer his insecurities and find out where he belongs. The Midnight Panther is an outstandingly illustrated and magical fable picture book. The atmospheric storytelling makes this book a joy to read aloud to a class and the breathtaking imagination lends itself to inspiring children’s creative writing.

Fiona is the fruit bat who is afraid of the dark, afraid of the unknown and afraid to try flight. But calming and confidence-building words from her mother show her way. A good book to help children deal with new and unfamiliar situations. Reading this will not only teach them about overcoming fear, but also the science behind echolocation and lives of fruit bats.

My mother and I don’t speak the same language. Her English is not good, and my Mandarin stopped at the picture-book level on the day I started kindergarten in California, as I realized that the few English words I knew weren’t going to get me very far. I immersed (沉浸) myself in strange grammar and new vocabulary. As my mother tongue withered (逐渐淡去) in my mind, English allowed me to explain my personhood here and silence the narrative that I was just a shy, odd Asian.

My wish to write, however, made me unintelligible to my mother. She couldn’t understand why I’d spoil other better chances. I’d tried to communicate with her in Chinese, searching my mind for sentences: How could I describe my gratitude for a path to self-fulfillment when all I could say was “kai xin” or “happy”? Without the words to bridge the gap between our worldviews, our dissatisfaction and worry turned into stubbornness.

I landed a day job editing a design magazine but worked on my novel in my off-hours. As its main characters, Marissa and Kathleen’s mother-daughter relationship was similar to my own, troubled and split by cultural differences—though always revived by love. But the book is in English, so my mom won’t be able to read it.

Writing the book gave me a reason to mine for details about my family. I’d spent so much of my adolescence shedding (摆脱) my background that when I reached adulthood, I became interested in our history. I started asking questions, hoping to find a new understanding of us.

Her answers were mixed with joyful memories, like the pleasant smell of the flowers my mother would pin to her blouse, or the hubbub(喧闹)of visiting her cousins in the countryside. As her world became clearer to me, I came closer to knowing who she is.

When I showed my mother a copy, she noticed her Chinese name in the acknowledgments and said in Mandarin with a shaking voice, “Now I know you truly love me.” I wish it hadn’t taken this long to find a way to tell her. She may not understand it word for word, but I know she gets the message.

One of the reasons why so many people listen to music during exercise is that it has a number of benefits. The research around the positive influences of music during exercise was reviewed in a paper in the February 2020 issue of Psychological Bulletin.

Probably the biggest influence of music on exercise, based on these findings, is that listening to music during exercise can make you feel better about what you have done. Experiments find that people feel more positive about the exercise when they have listened to music than when they have not. The impact of music didn’t depend on the intensity of the exercise, and the effect appeared for both trained and untrained athletes.

Music also seems to reduce people’s feeling of how much they are exerting themselves. That is, at the same level of intensity of activity, listening to music can make you feel like you are exerting less effort than you would feel without music. Some studies have also shown that when athletes are free to set their own exertion level, they are willing to exercise more intensely with music than without. For some people (particularly when they are early in their training), music helps them focus on the music rather than on pain.

Music also appears to have a small effect on performance overall. Athletes perform better both during exercise and while engaging in their sport when there is music. In the studies analyzed, fast music, with a tempo greater than 120 beats-per-minute, was more effective than slow music. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the athlete chooses the music or whether it is chosen by someone else. So, the playlists selected by the teachers of an exercise class you’re taking may work even if you don’t love all of the songs.

The one place where music doesn’t seem to have much of an impact is on physiological functioning. The heart rate of an athlete is not consistently affected by music.

Shyness is something that many people battle with every day. They are afraid to look people in the eyes and have a hard time speaking to new people. This makes it very hard to get ahead at work and in making new friends and business connections.     1     There are ways to get around this fear and get out there and start talking to people.

●Remember that most people are not looking at you. When you are shy you may believe that people are constantly watching and judging you.     2     Most people are always busy looking at themselves and worrying about what people think of them. When you are talking to someone new they are not picking apart your every word; they are worried about what you think of them.

●     3     Instead of always complaining yourself about things you think you are not doing better, turn your focus to the things that you do well. Your self-talk is very important to how you feel. Stop negative self-talk. Instead remind yourself every morning of all the great things you have to offer. Whenever you start feeling shy again run over your list of things that makes you happy.

●If you do not have an exercise routine, you should start one now.     4     You do not spend hours a day in the gym. You should spend about 30 minutes a day walking or doing something physical you enjoy. If you are physically capable you could also add 20 minutes of light weight training two or three days a week.     5     Being able to stand with your back straight and your head held high will definitely help overcome shy feelings.