Emma: A BabyLit® Emotions Primer

BabyLit® Primers

by Jennifer Adams, Alison Oliver (Illustrator)

Step into the drama filled world of Jane Austin’s Emma: A BabyLit Emotions Primer. Your little one will learn about the meddling Emma Woodhouse, who takes it upon herself to become the village matchmaker, creating all sorts of feelings in others. Her friend’s emotions include Mr. Elton being angry, Miss Taylor becoming happy, while Jane Fairfax is tired.

JENNIFER ADAMS is the author of a dozen books including Remarkably Jane: Notable Quotations on Jane Austen and the popular Y Is for Yorick: A Slightly Irreverent ABC Book for Grown-Ups. Jennifer works as a writer and editor in Salt Lake City, Utah.

ALISON OLIVER runs Sugar design studio. Alison's design portfolio includes everything from logos to packaging and product design for clients such as Chronicle Books, Citibabes, and Aerie, as well as Gibbs Smith. She lives in New York.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Jane Austen, Classics, Childrens Classics, Emotion, Fiction

22 pages, Board book

First published August 1, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Jennifer Adams is the author of more than forty books. Her bestselling BabyLit board books (published by Gibbs Smith) introduce small children to the world of classic literature and have sold 1.5 million copies. She is the author of another series of board books, My Little Cities.

Jennifer’s picture books for children, Edgar Gets Ready for Bed, Edgar and the Tattle-Tale Heart and Edgar and the Tree House of Usher are inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.” She also has two new picture books forthcoming from HarperCollins.

Her titles also include books for adults, including Y is for Yorick, a slightly irreverent look at Shakespeare, and Remarkably Jane, notable quotations on Jane Austen.

Jennifer graduated from the University of Washington. She has 20 years’ experience as a book editor, including at Gibbs Smith and Quirk Books. She currently works as a consulting editor for Sounds True, developing their children’s line. Jennifer works some evenings at her local independent bookstore, The King’s English, to feed her book habit. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Bill Dunford, who is also a writer.

(bio from author's website)

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very straightforward and fun addition to the BabyLit series. The association between colors and emotions seems quite nice. The varied cast of characters I imagine helps make this an interesting experience for kids. It's not as sophisticated an approach to emotions as Mad, Mad, Mad, so it's probably best used as an intro to emotions from which you can build into more complex titles. Rowan has a very good time with this one still, so it's certainly not a bad one to have in your rotation for toddler reading.

As an adaptation of Emma, it's also quite good. Some of the other BabyLit titles don't convey much of their source text, but this one does a competent job. So it's a nice intro to this story, which hopefully leads your kids to read Austen.

[María Eugenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Al ser un libro sobre las emociones en el que los personajes solo salen una única vez, la trama en realidad no se sigue... pero me sospecho que está pensado para adultos que se la saben de memoria. XD

A primera vista parece que el diseño es muy simple (una palabra con un fondo de un solo color y un personaje en primer plano) comparado con los otros libros de la colección Little Miss Austen, pero hay muchos detalles, sobre todo en la ropa de los personajes. Se podría usar también para hablar de los colores con los niños.

Creo que mi página favorita es "Jane Fairfax is tired". Mira, Frank Churchill, Jane está ya hasta el moño de tus movidas. :P

[Tani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute!

[Lil’ Bee Bookshelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

So fun!! I think it is incredibly clever how it is an emotions primer and yet still tells the Emma story in a subtle way.

[Elevetha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emotions. Not the prettiest pictures but very cute and I feel that kids would really like this one, especially with just how colorful the illustrations are.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute gift for the Jane Austen loving parent in your life!

[Danielle Cluley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d recommend this book to anyone with young children. As an adult, I enjoyed recognising the characters from the Austen classic while my daughters delight in copying the emotions illustrated in the book. It’s a book we read almost every day and I’ve loved watching my ten month old wave her hands in the air at “Emma is excited” and scream at “Miss Bates is scared” just as much as I did with my first daughter. A definite family favourite!

[Laura Rowlands · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although fairly simple in concept, this is one of the books we got to help my son talk about and understand his emotions. At 3, he even 'reads' it to his little sister, complete with correct facial expressions and voices. It's also a good book to help with learning colors since all of the pages are different colors.

[Drew Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Matchmaking can be a real roller coaster of emotions.

BabyLit's previous Jane Austen offerings have been really great so I was sort of expecting more from this one than I found. I don't really understand why everyone is colored like Muppets (which would make more sense if the colors fit the emotions better?). Anyway, it was a great concept to pair Emma with emotions, but not much story and not too memorable.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

For: lit fans; readers looking for a book with facial depictions of emotions (many not seen in books for this age group.)

Possible red flags: doesn't really follow the original work or give context to that story.

[Jacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cute and colorful illustrations. I do wish that it had reasons included for why the characters felt their emotions. That way there was a bit of context to the emotion and the child might understand the word better. "Mr. Knightly was loved" because....
But overall good children's board book.

[Abby Nall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cute! Brightly colored and attention-grabbing for babies, just like all the other Babylit Primers I've picked up. My 2yo loves examining the facial expressions in this one and trying to copy them.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cute.

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The pictures could be more expressive of the emotions.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love ALL the books! Stylized and beautiful. Great concept for a series.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book to identify faces displaying emotions.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My daughter doesn't understand that it's about emotions yet, but she likes the colors on the page!

[Miss Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this one was well done! Very clear and distinct emotions for each character.

[TJ & AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was TJ's favorite of all the BabyLit books, the one he'd ask for the most and one of the few he'd flip through on his own. He loved imitating all the different expressions.

[Freddie D · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite novels disseminated into this concise, baby-friendly emotions primer. The perfect infant-level introduction to classic literature.

[Cetacean Walcott]

Its good not really good but I like the idea.
Literally.

[Chrisanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an adult, I feel like it's quite brilliant... an MA thesis in 6 pages. But it isn't for adults. And I felt like the different colored faces were confusing to E.

[Anna]

I didn’t like this one as much as the others. I thought that the facial expressions were kinda ambiguous.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I liked all the pictures." --Isaac, age 5

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Beth Huddleston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first picture books that my newborn really stared at. The bright but simple colors create a great contrast for new baby's eyesight.

[L. No Last-Name · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve yet to read Emma, and this babylit doesn’t make me wanna take it up any quicker.

[Melissa Swistek · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better books in the BabyLit series. The main characters of Jane Austin’s “Emma” display an emotion which is identified by the text. Felt like it was actually geared toward babies.

[Critley King · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an adorable introduction to the classic Emma but for toddlers. While this book is a bit too simple for my daughter's age, I would certainly gift this book for friends with younger children.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A baby intro to Jane Austen? Yep.