Zoom by Dannika Patterson and Ross Morgan

Some days for children at school are not always the best. For Tom his day seemed to be the worst. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. He arrives home angry and upset, feeling very negative about himself and takes himself off to his room. His mother waits quietly with a snack to give Tom the opportunity to settle down. While he is settling, he picks up his grandfather’s camera and zooms in on things happening in the storm outside.

Once Tom has calmed his whirling thoughts, he and his mum talk about his day. With help from his mum, his perception of what happened changes when he begins to put the single isolated events into perspective. The spilt paint was turned into a spectacular painting, the dropped lunch happened because he was intercepting a ball as it was about to hit a window and his second to last place in a running race came about because he stopped to help a classmate who had fallen over. Using the camera and the analogy of zooming in and out with the lens, helps Tom gather a different take on his worst day ever. He realises that what happened was not as bad as he first thought and the bigger picture tells another story.

This very emotive story will be an excellent resource for homes and schools. So many students struggle to control their emotions when things start to unravel. This book gently explores how to try to change the narrative and the glorious illustrations provide a deeply engaging visual connection to the story. Teacher's notes are available.

Themes: School, Family, Home, Perspective, Reframing, Resilience, Wellbeing.

Kathryn Beilby