Yoga is a popular and equipment-free full body exercise that can be done by nearly everyone at any age—even kids!
And one of the benefits for kids is that practicing yoga helps to maintain flexibility as they get older.
Most yoga books are generally instructional, providing pictures of individual poses and routines. While useful, it may not be of interest for kids to look at a bunch of adults in funny positions with complicated sounding names.
Instead, author Teresa Ann Power and illustrator Kathleen Rietz have taken a different approach, one that we think will easily capture the attention of younger readers.
“The ABCs of Yoga for Kids” presents a variety of yoga poses in the format of an alphabet book—something which kids will already be familiar with!
Each letter has two or three poses to go along with every letter, such as Triangle for T, Bridge for B, W for Warrior, P for Pretzel (or P for Plank—like a pirate ship plank!), and many others. Accompanying each are colorful illustrations with all types of young children performing each pose, some with images of what they are trying to imitate, such as a tree, an otter, a lion, a chair, and more. We find this to be a great approach! Since kids naturally want to emulate animals and other things by playing pretend and this provides them with many opportunities. Instead of kids looking at yoga as exercise, they get to play!
With each pose is a little bit of rhyming poetry which describes the movements involved—adding a fun way to exercise their minds as well as their bodies!
Lovely illustrations, easy-to-read, cute, and accessible to all, “ABCs of Yoga for Kids” is a great little book that accomplishes what it sets out to do.
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Ed Justus is the owner of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe. Yuriko and Ed Justus are Kalaheo residents.
Thank you so much for the wonderful review! I really appreciate it!