A book can help with
For the loud, delighted, full-of-life child, and where to point all that energy.
Some children arrive at everything at full pelt. They are loud, delighted, enthusiastic about absolutely everything, and rather a lot first thing in the morning. The world tends to ask them to tone it down, and a child who hears that often enough starts to believe there is too much of them.
There isn’t. Exuberance is a gift, and it needs pointing rather than dampening. These books celebrate children who are gloriously themselves at full volume, and show that enthusiasm carrying them somewhere worth going.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Delight in the ordinary
At this age zest is not something to encourage, it is the factory setting. What follows matches a toddler’s appetite for the world rather than trying to teach them to have one.
A year of babies being kissed, dressed, rocked, fed, carried and generally delighted in, in rhyme that bounces along. Marla Frazee draws every kind of family without making a point of it. Pure celebration, and a good one to read when everybody is tired of everything.
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A baby’s whole day seen through a peephole in each page, from the cot in the morning to the bath at night. Nothing remarkable happens and that is exactly the point: at one, the ordinary day is the adventure. Published in 1981 and still one of the best things going.
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Full volume
For little ones it’s about seeing a big, loud character celebrated rather than shushed.
Gerald is mocked for his clumsy dancing until he finds his own music and dances better than anyone. It rhymes gorgeously and makes the point that you may just need your own tune rather than everyone else’s. A joyful favourite.
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A bouncing, exuberant rhyme in which a girl declares she likes herself entirely, wild hair and all, regardless of anyone’s opinion. It’s pure energy on the page. Children join in fast and read it at volume.
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Somewhere to put it
Older children benefit from seeing enthusiasm turned into something, rather than simply contained.
Ada’s relentless questioning drives everyone slightly mad and turns out to be exactly what makes her a scientist. It celebrates a child who is too much of everything and points it somewhere. Bright, rhythmic and much loved.
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Pippi is impossibly strong, entirely unrestrained and completely herself, and she has delighted children for generations precisely because nobody manages to tone her down. For an exuberant child, she is the patron saint. Enormous fun to read aloud.
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Books with the volume up
You do not teach zest at eleven, you feed it, and around now a loud, delighted child starts getting the message that enthusiasm is embarrassing. What follows has enough energy in it to keep up with them.
A boy falls out of the sky in silver underpants, delighted by absolutely everything he finds on Earth including mangoes, and has no idea who he is. Full colour, very fast, and properly funny rather than funny for a children’s book. The first of a long series, which matters if you have a reader with appetite.
or on Bookshop.org
Holly is caught in a strange lightning storm and discovers she can generate electricity, which turns out to be a good deal less convenient than it sounds. Part prose, part comic strip, so the pace never once drops. Good for a child who reads in bursts and wants something with the volume turned up.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page for working out where all that fizz might best go this month, from clubs to projects to sheer running about. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
A child who is repeatedly asked to be less is learning something unhelpful about themselves. Enthusiasm is far easier to aim than to switch off, and it tends to be the thing people love most about them later.
So find places where being loud and delighted is welcome rather than only teaching them where it isn’t, and say what you enjoy about their energy out loud. There is a difference between teaching a child when to be quiet and teaching them to be smaller.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.