Additional information
by Anna Housley Juster (Author), Cynthia Cliff (Illustrator)
A 2024 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite Winner.
Your amygdala works hard to protect you from danger, but what about when it gets things wrong? This amusing character-driven narrative helps children learn to calm their amygdala and control their fight-flight-freeze impulses.
The amygdala is the brain's alarm system that alerts for danger, but sometimes it gets things wrong and needs help calming down. In this picture book, young readers receive kid-friendly information about the amygdala from the amygdala, how it can sometimes get confused, and simple ideas to calm and train it.
The amygdala in How to Train Your Amygdala makes complicated concepts accessible to children so they can understand their bodies, practice impulse control, and boost their self-regulation. "You have probably never seen me before, but I am right here in your brain. There is an amygdala in everyone's brain. It's true! All humans have one. Many other animals do too."
Throughout the book, the amygdala and the reader practice anxiety-calming and mindfulness strategies such as deep breathing, visualization, and progressive relaxation. With anxiety on the rise among children, learning how to calm the amygdala is a critical life skill.
Additional content at the back of the book includes an amygdala's training playbook for kids and more information for adults to help reinforce the book's message.Author Biography
Anna Housley Juster, PhD, LICSW, is an award-winning author, child mental health clinician, education consultant, and mom. She began her career as a Head Start teacher, served as director of content for Sesame Street, and has over twenty-five years of experience supporting children and families. Anna currently treats children managing anxiety, ADHD, and behavior challenges with expertise in cognitive behavioral therapy, play therapy, trauma therapy, and parent guidance. Her first picture book, How to Train Your Amygdala, is an NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite and has been translated into French, licensed for translation, print, and distribution by the Ministry of Education for Indonesia, and was published as an English-Spanish bilingual edition, How to Train Your Amygdala/Cómo entrenar tu amígdala. Her second picture book The Best Good Thing follows a young girl who discovers joy on a very bad, smad day. Anna grew up exploring in mud, sand, and snow, surrounded by stories, and is a firm believer in the power of play. She lives with her husband, two daughters, and one very soft dog near Boston, MA.
Cynthia Cliff is a self-taught artist and author who grew up in a tiny historic village in rural Virginia surrounded by her large superstitious family, and farms and woodlands where she spent every waking hour. This upbringing provided her with a deep love and appreciation for history, family, nature, and folklore--themes that find their way into much of her whimsical, folk-art inspired, and optimistic artwork. She resides in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., with her partner and four-legged family.
