Nurse Dorothea Presents Why Coping Skills Work and What are Some that can be Done Anytime and Anywhere, by Michael Dow (Dow Creative Enterprises, 308pp, $33.62, 2024) Review by Skye Anderson
Having reviewed two other 'nurse-y' titles for kids by Michael Dow, about heatstroke and bacterial meningitis, I expected the same from this book on coping skills but was I surprised! It is quite good and extremely one of a kind with nearly 150 individual illustrations - each one very detailed and worthy of discussion and comparison with the text on the facing page. As they say, when one uses more than one sense, one tends to remember more easily and for a longer time.
We also like the age range: from puberty to 99+! The reading becomes easier with advanced age since the print is large and at least one page has only one sentence though that could also be a disadvantage.
The Topic
Stress is common in everyday life and if we can teach youngsters how to cope, it would be a lesson for the ages, a lesson well worth learning. And nurse author Michael Dow does just that with plenty of examples, mostly offered by students themselves.
Stress is defined as well as numerous examples for how to get rid of the reactions to stress, one being accepting yourself. The author uses students to relay some of the examples and each student has a different name and even looks different to appeal to a more diverse audience.
This book can be read by an individual or used as part of a therapy session or even as a group workshop. And the words are there for you already repeated verbatim when they segue into the next page.
What We Would Change
Although we love the idea of a related illustration on each two-page spread, the font size is a bit big but one does get used to it. We would, however, make the organization of the book easier to remember by including perhaps an outline in the front or chapters and chapter titles. And we caught the advice to see a dentist yearly (we had always known that advice to be, twice a year).
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