HAPPY, HEALTHY MINDS

A mental health guide for early-adolescent concerns.

While many mental health guides for the age group extol the mind-body connection, emphasizing sleep, a healthy diet, and exercise to ward off anxiety, this book goes beyond these principles to explore ways to reshape negative thoughts into more positive ones. Assembled by a team at the London-based self-help publisher, the conversational text is divided into chapters on kid-relevant topics. The first and lengthiest chapter considers parents, such as why they are annoying and don’t always follow their own rules. Through real-world scenarios, examples from literature, and a scattering of art reproductions (all with White subjects and mostly European in origin), the authors ask readers to see things from a different perspective—in this first chapter, to consider their parents as adults who are fussy out of love and want good lives for their children. Subsequent chapters focus on screen time, bullying, anger, friendship, divorce, body image, the pressures of gender norms, and more related topics. In each chapter, important questions or ideas, such as “Gender doesn’t say what you are supposed to be like,” are highlighted; numerous chapters also include space for self-reflection. Stewart’s friendly, full-color illustrations are consciously diverse in representation of race and family structure. Intermittent Briticisms will not deter readers, but the text does stereotype homeless people in one instance and at the same time persistently uses the term “addiction” instead of “substance-use disorder,” and an anti-perfectionism exercise strews words such as “twits,” “idiots,” and “stupid” about liberally.

Imperfect but potentially helpful.