4-Star Review: Moody Moody Cars by Eileen Kennedy-Moore

Freewheeling! Full of feelings! Traveling near and far. HONK if you see me. I’m a moody moody car!

Welcome to one of the many stops on the one-day blitz for Moody Moody Cars by Eileen Kennedy-Moore with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

About the Book

Moody Moody Cars
by Eileen Kennedy-Moore

Published 16 April 2022
Magination Press

Genre: Children’s Picture Book
Page Count: 32
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Freewheeling! Full of feelings! Traveling near and far. HONK if you see me. I’m a moody moody car!

Hop in and ride along as our auto-friends personify the twists and turns of feelings. This rhyming picture book shares various expressive classic cars and invites readers to figure out the emotions, from excited to angry and more, behind the facial expressions. This is a playful, approachable way to teach kids about feelings and emotions and to develop an essential skill as kids travel along in their social world.

An answer key in the back to help readers identify all of these moody, moody cars; included are a 1956 Jaguar XK-0, a 1948 Delahaye, a 1959 Buick Electra, a 1965 A.C. Cobra, a 1938 Delage Coupe, a 1956 Buick Centurion, a 1955 Indianapolis, a 1938 Bugatti 57SC, a 1939 Buick Model 40, and a 1929 DuPont LeMans.

Why Kids Need Moody Moody Cars

Young children deal with many of the same emotions that adults do. Children get angry, sad, frustrated, nervous, happy, or embarrassed, but they often don’t have the words to talk about how they’re feeling. Instead, they sometimes act out these emotions in very physical and inappropriate ways.

Parents and teachers can use Moody Moody Cars to help their children understand and express their emotions in healthy ways.

Being able to read emotions in ourselves and others is like having a GPS for life.

Research tells us that children who are better at understanding facial expressions of emotions are also:

Better liked by their peers
Less likely to act out aggressively, and they
Do better in school.

One study found that children’s ability to interpret facial emotions at five years of age predicts how well they do socially and academically–even four years later (Izard et al. 2001).

Research also shows that talking about feelings, practicing labeling them, and discussing their causes can help children increase their understanding of emotions in themselves and others (Yuill & Little, 2018).

In this quirky, joyful picture book, classic automobiles come alive to express a range of feelings, from excited to angry. Young readers, their parents, and teachers can simply admire some really cool cars, or they can also dive deeper into the engine of emotional understanding that helps drive us all toward personal well-being, healthy relationships, and educational progress.

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

My Review

My Rating: 4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Consider liking my review on Goodreads

I was granted complimentary access to Moody Moody Cars by Eileen Kennedy-Moore as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Goddess Fish Promotions. Thank you for the opportunity, it was fun! As always, my thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Moody Moody Cars is a fun picture book for kids that aims to teach about emotions by having fun with the faces we all see on cars. Most of the full-page spreads introduce a new car displaying a new emotion with a fun little selection of the car’s thoughts. Every few pages the book takes a break to talk about emotions and how we’re feeling on rainbow striped pages with a repeating, almost lyrical structure.

I think the cars themselves and the funny words and sounds they choose to emphasize are a lot of fun, and I can definitely see this being the sort of book my own daughter would have requested 12 bedtimes in a row about a year ago. If I must nit-pick, my complaint is that anywhere orange text appears on top of light blue there isn’t enough contrast. It’s not as easy to read that text as everything else on the page.

I have taken a peak at the reviews posted before mine and I see some criticism that the story is silly, disjointed, and not “a story.” These would be valid complaints if this were marketed as a cohesive full-plot story or if it were aimed at an older audience. For the target audience and the purpose this book hopes to serve, I think it’s exactly what it should be. It fun, it’s funny, a child can flip around to random pages and demand that the book be read out of order and it’ll still make sense.

About the Author

Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, is an author and clinical psychologist, based in Princeton, NJ. Her most recent books for children are Moody Moody Cars and Growing

Friendships: A Kids’ Guide to Making and Keeping Friends (co-authored with Christine McLaughlin). She has also written or co-authored four books for parents: Kid

Confidence, Smart Parenting for Smart Kids, The Unwritten Rules of Friendship, and What’s My Child Thinking? She is the professor for an audio-video series from The

Great Courses, called Raising Emotionally and Socially Healthy Kids.

A trusted expert on parenting and child development, Dr. Kennedy-Moore serves on the advisory board for Parents magazine, and her blog, Growing Friendships on Psychology

Today, has over 4 million views.

Dr. Kennedy-Moore has been a featured guest on Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Today Show, Good Day Philadelphia, and dozens of major radio shows and podcasts. She has

been interviewed and quoted in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Parents, Real Simple,

Working Mother, and Woman’s Day.

She and her husband have four children. Learn more at EileenKennedyMoore.com or DrFriendtastic.com (for children).

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Goodreads

Giveaway Alert!

The author will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter.”

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.