Emotion Monsters with Nina!

Anh’s Anger by Gail Silver is an imaginative, playful story of a child meeting his anger (depicted as a red and orange monster). In the story, Anh learns how to work with his anger to make it shrink and disappear. This book, along with Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty provided inspiration for students to discuss their own feelings and reactions to extreme emotions. What would those emotions look like if they came to life as monsters? What colors would they be, what shapes would they take and how would they act? Each student created a collaged monster with fabric, tissue paper, yarn and construction paper that represents an emotion of their choice. Introducing this variety of materials gave the students an opportunity to experiment with creating different surface textures and stylistic details to produce a visual representation of emotions that we see in ourselves.