How to Train Your Amygdala

Your amygdala works hard to protect you from danger, but what about when it gets things wrong? This amusing character-driven narrative helps children learn to calm their amygdala and control their fight-flight-freeze impulses.

The amygdala is the brain's alarm system that alerts for danger, but sometimes it gets things wrong and needs help calming down. In this picture book, young readers receive kid-friendly information about the amygdala from the amygdala, how it can sometimes get confused, and simple ideas to calm and train it.

The amygdala in How to Train Your Amygdala makes complicated concepts accessible to children so they can understand their bodies, practice impulse control, and boost their self-regulation. "You have probably never seen me before, but I am right here in your brain. There is an amygdala in everyone's brain. It's true! All humans have one. Many other animals do too."

Throughout the book, the amygdala and the reader practice anxiety-calming and mindfulness strategies such as deep breathing, visualization, and progressive relaxation. With anxiety on the rise among children, learning how to calm the amygdala is a critical life skill.

How to Train Your Amygdala is a 2024 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite winner.

Anna Housley Juster, Ph.D., LICSW, is an award-winning author, child and adolescent mental health clinician, and early childhood education consultant. She began her career as a Head Start teacher and has over two decades of experience supporting children and families across a variety of contexts including schools, museums, libraries, and clinical mental health settings. During several years in children's media, she served as director of content for Sesame Street developing curriculum for the series, publishing, product development, and interactive technology. Anna is a firm believer in the power of play, her favorite number is 3, and she lives with her husband, two daughters, and one very soft dog near Boston, Massachusetts.

Cynthia Cliff is a self-taught artist and author who grew up in a tiny historic village in rural Virginia surrounded by her large superstitious family, and farms and woodlands where she spent every waking hour. This upbringing provided her with a deep love and appreciation for history, family, nature, and folklore--themes that find their way into much of her whimsical, folk-art inspired, and optimistic artwork. She resides in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., with her partner and four-legged family.