The Huge Bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside
“My favourite character is the old lady who lives next door because she has lots of good advice and she is very helpful and a good friend to Jenny. There were lots of different characters in the book who Jenny could ask for help, I like how we see lots of different people she could ask and how we realise everyone can need help sometimes. The story is a great example of how we will all feel sometimes, and it makes it easy to see how worries can build up and affect all areas of our lives, even for grown-ups like parents or teachers. My favourite part of the book is when Jenny figures out how to deal with her bag of worries, the end of the story gives lot of brilliant ideas about how we can all treat our worries. The illustrations in the book are very bright and colourful and give lots of highlights to the important points in the story. It would have been good if there had been some talking points at the back of the story to help start a conversation about worries we might have and how we could be like the characters in the story. There could have been more information about some of the worries that the other characters have, it is helpful to see that for example Mum and Dad also have worries but this could have been talked about more. There are lots of worries in the bag but none are talked about in too much detail, it would have been good to maybe name and explore some in a bit more detail at the end to help with sorting them into groups. I would recommend this book for KS1 children as a great introduction to discussing worries and anxieties in an informal and accessible way. This book is a great tool to use in class as a whole class story to open up group discussions and allow conversations about difficult and sometimes abstract concepts.”