Book Review
The Adding Assets Series for Kids
People Who Care About You
By Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick (2004, Free Spirit Publishing)
Helping Out and Staying Safe
By Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick (2004, Free Spirit Publishing)
Reviewed by Kathy Robison, NCSP
Resilience involves the ability
to successfully cope with and/or overcome challenges in one’s environment.
For children who have one or more risk factors challenging optimum developmental
outcomes, resilience suggests the ability, through having or acquiring protective
assets, to successfully overcome those risks and develop competence. Research
generally supports protective factors as mediating the effect of risk factors
in a child’s development. Although resilience occurs in the context of the
interactions of multiple systems and is not likely to be produced by skill
building alone, as school psychologists, we may be in a unique position to
support the development of protective assets that are related to resilience.
The Adding Assets Series for
Kids is based on the research of the Search Institute and its Developmental
Assets. The series will include eight books, each covering a specific developmental
asset and providing strategies for helping children build and strengthen those
assets. The external assets include support, empowerment, boundaries and
expectations, and constructive use of time. The internal assets include commitment
to learning, positive values, social competencies and positive identity.
This is a review of the first
two books of this eight-book series. In the first book, People Who Care
About You—The Support Assets, the authors describe
six assets: Family Support, Positive Family Communication, Other Adult Relationships,
a Caring Neighborhood, a Caring School Climate and Parent Involvement in Schooling.
In the second book, Helping Out and Staying Safe—The
Empowerment Assets, the authors describe four assets: a Community that
Values Children, Children as Resources, Service to Others and Safety.
The books are written for children from 8-12 years old and have a similar layout.
Each book starts by defining what is an asset, talking about why we need assets
and providing guidelines for how to use the book. The authors use stories to
introduce each asset, then provide “ways to add the asset” at home,
at school, in the neighborhood, in the child’s faith community and with
friends. Although the books are meant for children to read to themselves, the
authors state, “building assets for and with young people is primarily
an adult responsibility.” Working with adults is reinforced in
the introduction and in “A Note to Grown-ups” at the end of each
book. To facilitate adult participation, the authors are creating guides for
adults to use interactively with children, including materials for generating
discussions, lesson plans, activities, reproducible items and resources. Adults
can access resources for these first two books as of February 24, 2005, by visiting
the publisher's website at www.freespirit.com
These first two books in the
Adding Assets Series for Kids present a variety of strategies and tools
for developing assets. It will be important, however, to know the reading
skills of the child before suggesting the books. Younger children may have
more difficulty reading the books independently. (I asked an eight-year old
to read one of the books and he had a hard time getting through the first
two paragraphs.) The authors emphasize adult involvement and I agree that
this is a critical component of the asset-building process. I would strongly
recommend that an adult be actively involved in the process of reading the
book with the child and helping implement the strategies, especially with
younger children. It will also be important to understand the individual
child’s needs and to focus on building assets that are relevant for that child
within the school environment. Overall, this looks like a series that will
provide good strategies and support for children. I look forward to seeing
the resource materials.
© 2005, National Association of School Psychologists. Kathy Robison, EdS, NCSP, is a school psychologist
for the Minneapolis Public Schools.