A Little SPOT of Empathy: A Story about Understanding and Kindness Paperback – April 17, 2021

Author Diane Alber earned her degree in Fine Arts from Arizona State University and writes and illustrates inspiring books for children. Her books to date include her very popular Little SPOT series, which includes A LITTLE SPOT OF EMPATHY. The overall title of this excellent group of books is Inspire To Create A Better You Series - and that is exactly what this story achieves.This little book may be for kids, but the messages are so important that every adult should absorb the content! Diane’s fine illustrations enhance this superb little book, again introducing Little SPOT – ‘Hi! My name is EMPATHY. I’m here to help you understand the feelings of others, so you can create a connection, make a friend, and show people you care about them…We all spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves. We think about what we want, what we need, and how we feel. It’s important to care about ourselves, but sometimes we forget to think about the feelings of others.’ SPOT also explains Perspective, Empathy, spotting feelings of others (scared, sad, mad) and practicing empathy and, of course, kindness.This is one excellent book about noticing, participating in, and honoring all manner of feelings – another successful Alber book on learning creativity! Recommended. Grady Harp, May 22

As an elementary school counselor, these books are going to quickly become an important addition to my counseling library! When I previews some of the Spot books, I quickly scooped up as many of them as I could. I can’t wait to dig into them more, and use them in classroom lessons, groups, and with individual students.The Empathy book is wonderful, fresh look at this important topic! The language is so kid-friendly, and will really help me convey these soft skills to my students. The book has relatable scenarios in it, with realistic interactions and conversations between the characters. I look forward to using this with my students soon!

We love Diane’s “Little SPOT of” books. We are using them to support our child’s emotional development and increase his competency for emotional regulation and connection with others. This book compliments other books she has written and is a nice building block for helping children in the emotional intelligence journey. It gives an example of what empathy looks like, and additional ideas of how we can practice using it with others. Child-friendly language and examples are used throughout all of the books. Drawing are simple, interesting and colorful. They also use consistent color to represent different feelings. A really great addition to any emotional regulation tool kit for young children. Keep creating and inspiring others to create too Diane!

Just discovered these books and love what I see so far! Bought my first book for our grandkids and can’t wait to get it. Diane does a great job explaining feelings and character traits for little kids. Important to learn these things, but in particular with the world we live in today. Also like the examples she includes. What else attracts me to these books is how colorful they are! Will definitely suggest these books to the young moms that I know.

Such a great book. I used it with 3rd graders and they loved it. They begged for more Little Spot books, and now I read them a new one every day. Diane Abler does a terrific job explaining so many of the positive and negative emotions kids deal with everyday, but don't know how to articulate and process. These books help them understand their feelings and that they are normal feelings that everyone has. Their emotional vocabulary has grown in leaps and bounds thanks to this series of books.!

This colorful story is a great starting point to talk about empathy, what it is, what it looks like and sounds like, and words to use to practice it. I read it to my first grade class and we had fun practicing with one another. Empathy is a hard topic because young children are so egocentric, but this cute book made it relatable with its real-life examples. I love how it tied in recognizing other spots (feelings) from her other stories.

I really like this book for younger kids (under 9). Older kids may find it a little basic. But, the concepts are clear and easy to grasp, so you can add the nuance for them without them getting confused/lost.

I chose this rating after reading this to my son who is on the Spectrum and here is his opinion, he absolutely loved the colors and it explained more of others feelings, and how you can help them feel less of what they are feeling ex sad, mad ( bad feelings), also how to look at things from others view and its true my mom always teaches me that we should spread kindness and love everywhere we go. I have been bullied before and I really like your books and I'm sharing them with my 4 year old niece too.