My Mindful Little One: Bedtime

I have to confess to some suspicions when picking up this book for the first time.  Mindfulness is the latest in a long line of systems intended to help us relax and make our lives more worthwhile, and while this is an admirable goal, it can sometimes seem as though the systems themselves are the goal rather than helping our lives to be better and more focused.  However, in reading the book, and particularly in the illustrations, I found much to admire.  Written in rhyming couplets, the story is a simple one of three different children getting ready for bed.  They think of the day past and all the happy things they have done; they have baths while feeling the warmth of the water:  ‘I wash my feet, I wash my toes, I wash my face, I wash my nose.’  The emphasis is on feeling things with different parts of the body at a particular moment and on breathing and listening – all things to prepare us for sleep.  It is the illustrations, though, that make this book come alive.  Gentle and calm in colour and in detail, the sometime-swirling movement – even the text rises and falls gently – is what makes the book special.  My one caveat is that the text goes on a tad too long in explaining the details of using mindfulness.  Young children could find this a little overpowering.  However the basic idea is an excellent one, and the book can be used in parts or as a whole.  Some pages at the beginning explain mindfulness to parents, a useful tool for those of us not acquainted with the system.