This post is most definitely not being posted on a Friday! I am sorry for the delay but sometimes life just gets in the way of our schedule/plans and last week had many of those moments.
Today’s book review is all about superheroes as a slight continuation of last week’s review in which some superheroes were analyzed through a psychological perspective. These books are aimed at children, similar to our first posted book reviews.
The first few books are written by Dr. Janina Scarlet, the leading advocate of superhero therapy, a new technique that helps you to recover from common psychological and emotional problems by showing your concerns are mirrored in the stories of extraordinary superheroes from fiction. Other authors are explored and even a couple of games are recommended.
Superhero Therapy Books and More
Post Contents
Superhero Therapy: A Hero’s Journey Through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Description: This book takes readers through the core concepts of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which will better arm them to face the challenges of any superhero quest.
The author tells the tale of a group of troubled heroes enlisted a the Superhero Training Academy, learning to overcome their issues using the techniques of ACT.
Review: Did you ever want to become a Superhero? Did you ever wish you could get magical powers or travel through the universe, across time and space? This dynamic new self-help book is designed to help heroes who are struggling with anxiety, depression, anger, shame and trauma. Learn the skills of ACT in a fun and inviting way, through stories and artistic drawings that are sure to keep kids engaged.
Superhero Therapy: Mindfulness Skills to Help Teens and Young Adults Deal with Anxiety, Depression, and Trauma
Description: Our troubled heroes at the Superhero Training Academy are on another adventure. By learning to face up to their inner villains and monsters, these characters will inspire you to overcome your problems as well. When you’re finished, you’ll have a slew of new tools you can use—like mindfulness, self-compassion, and values—to help you conquer whatever life throws your way.
Review: Similar to the above listing, this book is fun, unique, and definitely outside-the-box of what is expected in therapy. Sometimes life is hard, and it takes super inner super strength to succeed and reach your goals. With this fun and unique guide under your belt, nothing will stand in your way. This book is a great second reading after the heroes journey through ACT, continue keeping kids engaged in learning their ACT skills.
Therapy Quest: An Interactive Journey Through Acceptance And Commitment Therapy
Description: This interactive new self-help book puts you, the reader, in a fantasy world where every decision you make and every path you take will influence the outcome of your journey. The skills are based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which has been shown through research to help people overcome depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain, addiction disorders and many other common problems.
Review: Did you ever want to be a hero? Have you ever dreamed of going on an epic quest to destroy monsters, defeat evil forces and fly on the back of a dragon? If you choose to accept this quest, you will have an opportunity to learn the skills that you need and put together a crew of loyal friends and companions to help you with your journey.
Therapy Quest is rich in “replay value,” situating the reader in engaging, entertaining, and easily-applicable scenes which are a joy to ponder and revisit. Your journey will be full of danger, loss, and strange creatures, but it will also be full of excitement, adventure, and fun, and will let you form life-long bonds of friendship, which no curses can break. This book is your call to adventure, an invitation to be the hero in your own story.
Therapy Quest is written with a wonderful sense of inclusivity. No matter who you are, simply by allowing yourself to indulge in humankind’s love of story, adventure, and imagination, you will almost certainly find that the delicate lessons imbued within the quest apply to you . It’s fairly likely you might complete your first “game” through Therapy Quest in a single sitting, and it’s equally likely that you’ll return for further thought and entertainment.
Dark Agents, Book One: Violet and the Trial of Trauma
Description: When she turns 19, Violet begins training at the Underworld Intelligence Agency (UIA) in hopes of becoming a Dark Agent—someone tasked with keeping the balance between the world of the living and the world of the undead. During her training, Violet hopes to finally overcome her fear of death and take control of her emotions, but instead, she finds that mindfulness, vulnerability, and acceptance are the skills most necessary to help her succeed.
Review: As Violet wages war against necromancers and demons, Violet learns to overcome her internal monsters as well. In this groundbreaking comic book for teens and young adults, we meet Violet—a witch whose parents were murdered by an evil necromancer when she was only six years old. Running between countries, as well as from herself, Violet never gets a chance to fully process her traumatic experience.
Blended seamlessly throughout the story are elements of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Highly recommend and look forward to future volumes to tell the story and address the important aspects of PTSD. It is a story with a therapeutic purpose and didn’t take away the story. This book might give you a way out of the darkness, too.
Superhero Therapy for Anxiety and Trauma: A Professional Guide With Act and Cbt-based Activities and Worksheets for All Ages
Description: Drawing on ACT and CBT, this guide incorporates popular culture into evidence-based therapy, offering a unique approach for mental health professionals to better support clients dealing with anxiety and trauma. With fun and engaging activities and downloadable worksheets, it aims to alleviate the shame and stigma surrounding mental health, empowering clients to discover their origin story and reframe their experiences to become real-life superheroes.
Review: Covering topics such as building resilience, identifying and overcoming key challenges, and mindfulness, this book introduces familiar superheroes as characters to identify with, aiming to validate clients’ experiences and encourage deeper understanding and reflection during sessions. It provides a range of activities and worksheets to use in a variety of settings with clients of all ages. This guide is an invaluable and timely resource for all mental health professionals working with those experiencing anxiety and trauma.
Nathan’s Autism Spectrum Superpowers
Description: The superhero of this book, Nathan, explains his Autism Spectrum superpowers, how they affect him, and ways his friends can help out when his superpowers spiral out of control. This book is a tool written by a mom/pediatric physical therapist to help kids, family, friends, and caregivers understand the Autism Spectrum and some of the struggles and superpowers associated with it.
Review: This short book takes something that could be scary and intimidating and paints it in a positive way. Kids will be excited and relieved to relate to the book and at the thought that they have superpowers. It even has a section to work through and write down a child’s own superpowers and kryptonite. This is the first book I have seen that breaks down specific “superpowers” that ASD kids may experience. The simple explanation for kids and adults to understand is further enhanced by the real-life situations and friend’s helpful hints. Vocabulary is introduced in a friendly way explains many of the common phrases and definitions used by educators and doctors.
Adventures of a Stuttering Superhero
Description: Adventures of a Stuttering Superhero is a three book series including Interrup-itis, Melissa Meets her Stamily, and Eye-Contact.
Adventure 1: Melissa is a brave stuttering superhero who confronts a student who is interrupting her and finishing her sentences. Join Melissa as she goes on a journey trying to cure him of his interrupt-itis and see how she figures out how to stop him in the end.
Adventure 2: Melissa goes on an adventure and attends her first event in the stuttering community. She meets other people who stutter for the first time and talks about stuttering with other adults and kids. She is inspired and has special connections with her new lifelong friends. It is here that she finds out what the word Stamily really means.
Adventure 3: Melissa has been feeling very confident at school when a surprise school event turns those feelings upside down. With the help of her teacher, Melissa goes on another adventure figuring out a new power. Will she learn this new power to survive the school event, or will this power not be what she thought it to be?
Review: This series is a unique foundation of stories regarding Melissa’s experience with a speech impediment. This is the first time I have encountered a book discussing this particular disadvantage that many children and adults face. These empowering stories discuss stuttering in a matter-of-fact tone to foster empathy and acceptance for those who stutter. I believe the art also reflects all different examples of diverse abilities, nationalities, and cultural practices. This book is great when used in conjunction with studying Adrian Nicholas Peterson, former running back for the Chicago Bears. He is also known as the “stuttering superhero” due to his inspiration to people who struggle with stuttering.
My Sister’s Super Skills: Introducing Kid-Friendly Social and Emotional Skills
Description: David is having a rough day…but his emotions are no match for his older sister Lily, who swoops in to save the day with some SUPER SKILLS!
When Lily observes her brother feeling frustrated, sad, and irritable, she quickly shows him some useful tips and tricks to help him feel better. Will Lily’s super skills be enough to save the day?
My Sister’s Super Skills introduces various empowering strategies that help manage emotions and promote positive social and emotional development while highlighting the importance of an emotional growth-oriented mindset and healthy sibling relationships.
Review: The author uses animals and a super sister, both extremely relatable characters, to teach coping skills to help deal with the feelings we all face on a regular basis: sadness, frustration, worry, anger. This book is helpful in teaching kids how to navigate the tough emotions that they may feel on a daily basis with various strategies, best if used with feelings guidelines and identifiers (look at a previous post for more info). My Sister’s Super Skills is a must-have to help children identify and manage their emotions in a fun way!
How to Be a Superhero Called Self-Control!: Super Powers to Help Younger Children to Regulate their Emotions and Senses
Description: Meet Self-Control, a superhero who wants to teach young children his superpowers of self-control! Anxiety, frustration, anger, and other difficult feelings won’t stand a chance against their new-found powers.
Self-Control teaches children with emotional and sensory regulation difficulties how to calm themselves using self-massage, deep pressure, breathing exercises, and activities such as making an imaginary list and finding their own peaceful place. This illustrated book also features an appendix with photocopiable super power charts, reinforcers, and reminder tools to ensure that parents, teachers, and other professionals can support children in upholding superhero strategies even after the book has been read.
Review: This is another unique book that takes a superhero approach to deal with emotional regulation. This book uses great kid-friendly language and analogies to make concepts easy to understand and to implement, plus the illustrations are super fun and engaging. Learning self-control is a life-long skill that can benefit even the healthiest of children as they enter school age.
Even Superheroes Have Bad Days
Description: All kids have trouble getting a grip on their emotions, sometimes—even young superheroes! But what do they do when they’re having a bad day? Colorful action-packed illustrations and a dynamite rhyming text reveal the many ways superheroes (and ordinary children, too) can resist the super-temptation to cause a scene when they’re sad, mad, frustrated, lonely, or afraid. From burning off steam on a bike or a hike to helping others, this energetic picture book has plenty of fun ideas to help kids cope when they’re feeling overwhelmed.
Review: Superheroes can help control emotions and can assist in learning new skills, but superheroes also have BIG emotions that can be negative and impact the lives of others. Fortunately, though, superheroes have super control over their emotions, according to this lighthearted exposé on how a group of superheroes deals with their frustrations.
Superheroes could cope with their bad days by tossing buses around, crumbling buildings, or igniting fires with their laser eyes. But instead, they use their superpowers for good deeds, such as hatching ‘building fabulous theme parks for giggles and gladness’. This book is full of action in a cartoonish style that will appeal to kids and definitely hold their attention.
Empathy is your Superpower
Description: Learning to recognize and consider the feelings of others is one of the most crucial steps in a child’s development―and it’s never too early to help little ones build those skills.
This illustrated storybook educates young kids on how to identify and practice empathy through simple real-life scenarios that are easy for them to understand. It’s written with clear language for adults to read aloud and features discussion questions and activities that encourage kids to talk about what they learned and use it in their lives.
Review: This book would be a great introduction to understanding empathy for school-age children. Kids will learn to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, lend a hand, and inspire others to do the same. As a therapist, I often find that empathy is one of the hardest terms for a child to understand. They have such difficulty with their own emotions that the thought of recognizing someone else’s is completely unheard of. This book could be the essential missing piece in starting the conversation about empathy with kids.
Kindness is my Superpower: A children’s Book About Empathy, Kindness and Compassion
Description: Throughout the story, little superhero Lucas will learn what kindness means and understand what it is like to be kind, sensitive, caring, and generous. Kindness and concern for others are held as moral virtues in nearly every society and every major religion, so it makes sense to start early in helping kids to understand what kindness really is.
Review: This book offers many examples to help children have more understanding for others, accept diversity, thrive in a multicultural and inclusive environment, and show more empathy. This charming story with rhymes and illustrations will help kids know it’s okay to make a mistake and say “I’m sorry”. It has the potential to help develop good manners and positive behavior at home, at school, in the store, and on the playground.
Breathing is my Superpower
Description: Breathing is my Superpower teaches children to regulate their emotions, especially if they are feeling upset, angry, or stressed.
Sofia will show your little ones how to control their breathing in various situations, whether at school, at home, or on the playground. Five Breathing Technique presented in the book will help calm your children and show them a fun way of managing their own body, breath, and emotions
Review: Mindfulness and yoga are becoming more popular in today’s society, mainly because the benefits are clear. These tactics can help center a person to lower highly intense emotions and help anyone to think more clearly in difficult situations.
I think that many children will be able to identify with Sofia throughout this story. There are some situations that Sofia finds herself experiencing different and difficult emotions. The book focuses on breathing while tracing your fingers, a skill that Sofia’s mom teaches her.
There are bonus creative breathing exercises in the back of the book that can be helpful and are easily understood. This sweet book has colorful pictures and rhymes which keep children engaged with the story and intrigued with the exercises.
How to Kill Your Batman: A Guide for Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse using Batman to Heal Hypervigilance
Description: This three-part book is a guide for older children and adults who may relate to the Batman character. The trauma of childhood sexual abuse is related to the childhood trauma in Batman’s story when a young Bruce Wayne witnesses the death of his parents.
In the first part of the book, the author explores the term “Boy Code” and the societal norms of being a “real” man.
In part two, the harms of hypervigilance are explained, using Batman and the development of cognitive distortions by male survivors as a result of being sexually abused.
Part three helps survivors understand how to “kill their Batman,” allowing them to explore the need for intimacy and healing rather than hypervigilance.
Review: Those of you who have read my earlier posts know that I am a huge Batman fan, so I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kill their Batman. In our culture, men are expected to be their own superheroes; strong, confident, stony, and ass-kicking. Part of the shame of the survivor is that, as children, they were not man enough to defend themselves, and they are embarrassed by their own weakness. Not talking about the experiences or allowing some emotional vulnerability is another way that men automatically try to cope.
As a counselor who treats trauma symptoms, this book is a welcome relief in a subject lacking resources. How to Kill Your Batman takes a unique approach in showing how trauma if left untreated, will overshadow all aspects of your life. Must read for individuals working in this particular field.
Using Superheroes and Villains in Counseling and Play Therapy
Description: Through rich and research-grounded clinical applications, this book explores creative techniques for integrating superhero stories and metaphors in clinical work with children, adolescents, adults, and families. Each chapter draws on the latest empirically supported approaches and techniques to address a wide range of clinical challenges in individual, family, and group settings. The chapters also explore important contextual issues of race, gender, culture, age, and ethnicity and provide case studies and practical tips that clinicians can use to support clients on their healing journey.
Review: This book is the accumulation of all the previous books in this post. It will help educators and therapists to understand how integrating superhero stories, games, and other tactics into everyday learning. It can also help children to better understand and engage with new concepts. The chapters explain how to integrate superhero mythology with contemporary, evidence-based, gold-standard psychotherapeutic approaches like CBT, behavioral treatment, and positive psychology. This book is a valuable therapeutic tool that no practitioner working with young people should be without
Imaginhero. A Superhero Therapy Tool Using CBT to Combat Anxiety and Negative Thinking
Description: Imaginhero is a card game that was developed to help children understand CBT techniques using superheroes and storytelling. Imagine superpowers that give you new ways to reduce anxiety, deal with confrontation, improve social skills, and increase focus. Imaginhero is a mindfulness therapy game suitable for children and adults. A resource to teach mindfulness in therapy sessions, the classroom, or homeschool, either to a group or individual. Recommended for ages 7+.
Review: These cards have the ability to teach children about visualization, creative thinking, and mindfulness as techniques for fighting against negative behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. These are tools to help kids with issues like stress and anxiety to have built-in resources for combating their stressors. Overall it is a good game for families, therapists, teachers, or anyone working with elementary-age children or teens.
Superhero Strengths: Building Resilience, Coping Skills, and Emotion Awareness Card Game
Description: Superhero Strengths is a therapeutic card game created for kids and teens who are learning to identify their strengths, understand feelings, build coping skills, and improve overall resilience. The deck includes 78 cards with questions to spark conversation about various topics related to emotions and strengths. The game can be played with 2-4 people and includes a link to free downloadable worksheets to use in conjunction with the game.
Review: I love these questions, the game was easy to understand and fun for the kids to play, especially good for kids into superheroes. A great addition to my play therapy games. It can be a great start in talking about superpowers from a therapy perspective. So often our therapy games are thinly veiled attempts to convince kids to behave but this is a strength-based game that helps kids feel good about themselves.
Resources & References:
What Is Superhero Therapy? | Psychology Today
SWHELPER – Social Welfare, Social Justice, and Social Good |
‘Superhero Therapy’: What Is It and Does It Work? – The Atlantic
Superhero Therapy: A Book to Help Your Inner Hero | Psychology Today
The Center for Stress & Anxiety Management SUPERHERO THERAPY
Superhero Therapy – Home | Facebook
Who doesn’t want to be a superhero? Bring these amazing superheroes in to teach kids about important topics!
Dr. Janina Scarlet | Your Superhero Identity & the Power of Heroic Stories
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