National Center for Youth Issues A Flicker of Hope

Amazing book. My niece loved it and it’s very inspirational!

The author Julia Cook outdoes herself with this amazing book centering on heavy topics, in a child-friendly manner. As a school counselor and licensed therapist I would definitely use this cook in and out of schools. Although it has elementary type of illustrations, the book could still be used with adolescents and adults, as it is written metaphorically. The book touches upon concepts of mental health, resilience, and building hope in others. I highly recommend it!

Great book about how NOT to lose hope. It is important to ask for help.

I used the book, Flicker of Hope, to design a cross-curricular lesson between guidance and Language Arts. This worked out really well as it lead to thought provoking activities for our students. One student said, ““I like this book because it tells people they don’t have to hide their feelings and that it’s ok to ask for help. Overall it has an amazing message and it is a very good book. I think it will help people relate to the characters and figure out that it’s ok to feel sad sometimes and that you just need to keep asking people to help you and give you hope. I really think that this will help get more hope givers because that’s what the world really needs right now. I absolutely love this book!”The issues addressed in the book are real issues our students face daily. The book provides them an avenue to explore and realize that they are not alone and it is ok to ask for help.

This book is amazing for children who cannot self-regulate when having an intense emotion and say they want to die. Or have thoughts of death. As a counselor the concept of their light, and letting someone help you, and then in turn helping others is relatable and makes it easy to facilitate conversations. The only part I did not like was someone the sayings, or things that happen, are not related to the age that would be reading this book, such as talking about you on social media, I believe. Someone old enough to be involved in Instagram, for example, would not be reading this book. There are parts I skip Bc I Don’t want to elicit sadness.