Title: Walter Wick's Optical Tricks

Author: Walter Wick

Themes: Communication, Developing Perspective, Validation, DBT

Age Recommendation: Elementary through high school

Walter Wick's Optical Tricks teaches perspective with photographs of optical puzzles and their solutions. It is helpful as a tool to introduce the concept that there can be many truths about any given situation, which leads well into a DBT discussion about middle path and wise mind. It is also useful in helping children develop an awareness that things/circumstances may not always be as they first appear. 

A simple intervention I use with this book is to take turns describing what we are seeing on the pages; the pictures of the puzzles are very different than the pictures of their solutions, even though they contain the same objects arranged in the same way. Have your child or client describe one of the two photographs and you describe the other, then switch photographs. This is an engaging way to introduce communication tools such as validation and "I feel" statements. This activity can also be used with parents and children as a way to practice communication skills and reinforce the validity of varying perspectives. 

Title: Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons

Author: Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Themes: Self-Esteem, Social Skills, Developing Empathy, Friendship

Age Recommendation: Pre-K through high school

Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons introduces basic social skills and defines positive attributes through scenarios that center around cookies!  Reading it with children provides opportunity for discussion about important qualities such as patience, kindness, and respect. 

I like to use this book with adolescents especially (prefaced with a statement along the lines of: "I know this might be too little-kid for you, but I think we should read it anyway because it has great illustrations and it really does have some good information in here..."). One approach is to ask them to identify an instance from their own life that illustrates what is going on with the characters in the book. It is helpful to take turns sharing examples so that kids don't feel singled out, though, as a clinician, I try to use figures from popular media as examples so that I don't share information from my personal life. This book seems to create a space in which adolescents can just let their guard down and develop some real insight. If you have the time and facilities (maybe on an inpatient unit, or if you are doing this at home with your own kids) it is fun to actually make cookies and encourage/guide kids to come up with their own "recipe for success" to apply to a current struggle they are facing.