Felix The Fox And His Awesome Odd socks is about a yellow fox who wears square glasses and rocks odd socks!
Felix has been made to believe that this isn’t how foxes should be, but he desperately wants to fit in and be the same as everyone else.
It is not until he meets a bird with a broken wing and one blue eye, that he realises how differences do not make him any less awesome!
With stress and mental health issues being on the rise in younger children raising issues of feeling different or inferior at a young age are vital to enable these feelings to be spoken about and processed. Through Felix, Katie hopes to promote self-acceptance and awareness, and acceptance of diversity, as well as allowing children to be able to recognise their own feelings of not fitting in or feeling different, and creating conversation to enable them to speak up, which is vital for positive mental health.
Review
Felix The Fox And His Awesome Odd Socks is a charming read, a gentle story about how it is okay to be you! That celebrating difference is something we should all embrace, for to all be the same would make the world around us a sadder place.
The story starts with Felix feeling lonely and sad because he is yellow, wears odd socks and glasses, being different leaves him feeling excluded and so he wanders off for a walk. He just wants to fit in with his sisters and brothers, but his differences mark him out, leaving him feeling lost, until he meets a little blue bird who like him is different. There starts his journey to accepting all the things that make him unique and special, opening up to how he feels, to his family and finding that being him is okay.
This is all told through a charming story, with bright and beautiful, eye-catching illustrations. The journey Felix takes is told in an easily accessible style, that a child will find simple to follow and learn from. Not just for those who feel excluded, but all children who learn through reading about how their actions can affect others. It is saying to them it is okay to diverge from accepted norms, that being kind is good. Katie Dodd through her writing shows them that they should celebrate difference, from the colour of a persons skin, to how they dress and the fact that some people need to wear glasses, while others a hearing aid to hear. I myself was picked on for wearing glasses and so I felt a connection with the story and I think many children reading Felix The Fox and his Awesome Odd Socks will to. So if it can make a difference to their lives that would be very special indeed.
It does all this in a way children can understand and within a story that takes a very important subject and gives it a very postive outcome.
It is an absolute joy to find any book that will help children accept each other for all the things that make them an individual. The world needs that right now, more than ever and finding Felix the Fox and his Awesome Odd Socks was a joy to be celebrated.
You can purchase Felix the Fox and his Awesome Odd Socks from Amazon
It can also be purchase directly from the publisher Beercott Books
Why not also consider ordering it from your local indie bookshop, many of whom have worked hard to keep usconnected to the world of reading during the current crisis.
About the author
Katie is an ETSY shop owner and a mental health campaigner who is passionate about raising awareness on mental health issues and challenging stigma. She makes a lot of items around mental health and positivity with the aim to make people smile and through her campaigning she works hard to put together projects locally to create conversation around mental health and raise awareness which have been picked up by the media and shared via various platforms, radio and media.
Katie has battled mental illness for most of her life and aims to offer hope and inspiration to others to show that things can get better and has spoken publicly about her own journey including on the Victoria Derbyshire Show, radio stations, as part of the lloyds bank #GetTheInsideOut campaign and on her own social media channels, website and via her own memoir In Bloom Not Broken which is a book of her own journey through mental illness.
She is passionate about spreading a positive message to children that promotes self acceptance and acceptance of others regardless of differences and to introduce children to positive mental health from a young age.
Follow Katie:
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/littlehappygiftshop
Twitter: @KatieMaylea85
Instagram: @katie_maylea_mental_health
Www.mentalhealthjourney.co.uk
http://www.littlehappythoughts.com
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