Children’s Book Helps Kids, Parents, Identify Moods

After class is dismissed and parents have rounded up their children, Vanessa Baldwin-Smith looks out of her classroom window at The North Ward Center Child Development Center, contemplating the view of the New York City skyline. The view is typical of Newark’s Forest Hill neighborhood, but inspiring nevertheless.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? During the day you can see the neighborhoods but during the winter, when the sun sets early, all you can see is the skyline from this classroom,” she says.

Baldwin-Smith’s survey of the view from her pre-K classroom reflects her approach toward her students—encouraging them to observe situations in different lights, taking in all perspectives. Her objective as a teacher is to help foster her student’s social and emotional development.

“In the classroom, it’s important to help my students self-regulate, understand their surroundings, and see how it all connects with their mood,” Baldwin-Smith says.

And now she has an author’s credit to help advance that classroom ideal. Baldwin-Smith wrote and illustrated her first children’s book, Jude’s Mood. The book was published in December 2012. As the title suggests, it’s about identifying one’s mood. In fact, the “mood” is the main character.

“As I started putting the book together I hid Jude, because I really didn’t know what I wanted him to look like. At some point, I realized that it was better that he was hidden and that the reader focus on the mood instead.

“This is an opportunity to teach children about feelings that they haven’t learned how to label yet,” she says. “They know what they feel but they don’t know how to articulate those feelings. They can also learn that they have the ability to make the mood change or go away—that’s the self-regulation component.”

For example, in Jude’s Mood, Jude (named after the author’s favorite charity St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) throws a tantrum when told he needs to eat his fruit.

“That’s so much part of a child’s regular day, but in the book, as well as in my classroom, we want to talk about the mood that leads to the reaction.”

Baldwin-Smith has worked for 25 years as a teacher at The North Ward Center’s Child Development Center, which operates the largest free preschool in the state with more than 700 children.

And during her time there, she’s had her share of students grow up and move on to great things. One former student who has found success, however, is not even an adult yet.

Thirteen-year-old Crystal Rivera, a former student of Baldwin-Smith’s at the Child Development Center, is also a recently published author, having released Diary of a Life Less Sweet: Life with My Little Brother’s Diabetes (Woodglen Publishing, LLC) in October 2012.

Through a series of diary entries, the book chronicles the thoughts and experiences of a girl with a diabetic younger brother. The book is based on Crystal’s real-life relationship with her younger brother.

In writing about her experiences, the book provided Crystal with an opportunity to realize her life-long dream of being an author, as well as share the challenges that she and other families with diabetes face daily.

“I wanted to write something that would help kids talk with their parents about life’s challenges,” Crystal said, adding that she and Baldwin-Smith remain close.

“She’s the best teacher I’ve had,” Crystal said. “I still call her for advice when I have big projects.”

Crystal, now an eighth-grade student at Jefferson Township Middle School in Oak Ridge, NJ, recalled how her former teacher encouraged her to tackle a subject that, at times, could be challenging.

“She told me to try hard, tell the truth, and really be myself. It worked,” Crystal said.

Adrianne Davis, the executive director of The North Ward Center, said she is proud of Baldwin-Smith for publishing the book as well as inspiring a generation of students.

“Vanessa is an inspiring teacher who is dedicated to her students,” Davis said. “Ever since she first started working here at The North Ward Center, she has gone above and beyond for her students.”

Stephen N. Adubato, the founder of The North Ward Center, said Baldwin-Smith has also mentored dozens of other teachers at the preschool.

“Vanessa cares deeply not only about the children in her own class, but all the children at the Center,” Adubato said. “With her book now published, she will be able to reach so many more children.”

Baldwin-Smith earned an associates degree at Essex County College, a bachelor’s from Rutgers Newark in psychology and a master’s degree in administrative sciences from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is currently completing her second master’s degree in mental health counseling at Fairleigh Dickinson.

And while Baldwin-Smith credited her combined studies, along with more than two decades as an educator, for giving her the knowledge to write this book, she quickly added she never thought she would be a published author.

“I remember one of my Essex County College professors saying ‘you have a very poetic way of writing,’ and although I began my college career wanting to be a journalist, I have incorporated my passion for poetry and writing, in what has been my calling—Teaching! It only makes sense that Jude's Mood is a rhyming story,” she said.

But it goes beyond professional and educational bona fides, Baldwin-Smith added. Jude’s Mood was inspired by—and dedicated to—a former colleague’s son, whose constant questioning and level of insight showed Baldwin-Smith that “while grown-ups might hesitate to ask questions when they don’t know the answer, kids don’t and it’s important we always encourage children to ask a million questions.

“Writing Jude’s Mood was personal for me. I didn’t expect this book to do what it’s done,” Baldwin-Smith said. “I never set out to be an author but it all seems to make a lot of sense now,” she said.

“These are blessings for me. I was going to be a journalist, then I’m a teacher, and now I’ve written this book. This is exactly where I’m meant to be.”