It’s Not Easy to Be Me

ABOUT THE BOOK
FAMILY ACTIVITIES

Text and Illustrations by Jilnar Hajou

A boy considers himself to be the best and the strongest among other children, but find this to be lonely and tiring. When he plays with his friends, the loneliness disappears.

Family Activities

“Light like a feather, but a few days ago I felt heavy like an elephant…”

Video

It’s Not Easy to Be Me – Parent Suggestions

“Light like a feather, but a few days ago I felt heavy like an elephant…” Tarek says about himself throughout the story. This information sparks our curiosity about what makes him feel heavy and what lightened his heart. Tarek reveals that when he acts selfishly and superior to others, he feels heavy, because it prevents him from communicating with others and leads to loneliness.
Sometimes, when we encourage our child to be competitive, we may be feeding his ego in ways which cause him to ignore the needs of others and can lead to rejection as well.
This book invites us to talk to our child about what nourishes him and what does not in his relationships with people around him. This conversation can lead us to the question: how can we encourage and support our child to express himself and develop his abilities, but still be kind and pleasant to other people?
We share with you some thoughts regarding this book…

Family Activities

We follow Tarek’s ego bag that he carries throughout the story: does its size and color change in the course of the book? What about all its different shapes?
We talk to our child about our invisible bag that we carry sometimes on our back when we feel stressed or sad. When do we feel the heaviness of the bag? What might help us to relieve the heaviness?
Our child might enjoy a conversation about things he likes to do alone and the other things that he likes to share with people.
“Burden bag, and happiness bag” game! We give each family member two bags one for the things that burden them and one for the happy things. Burdens can be heavy things like blocks or kitchen utensils, while happy things can be balloon or feathers. This is a good occasion for the family to hear about each other’s burdens and happiness and find ways to support each other.
This author/illustrator is known for her use of black and white colors. We can think together why she chose to use those two colors adding a little bit of red.