Savvy Review - My Friend, Failure - Savvy School Counselor

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for children’s books that tie into your school counseling curriculum. I had the pleasure of receiving a copy of a new growth mindset book written by Anthony DeThomas called My Friend, Failure. Today, I want to tell you why I like it!

For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with growth mindset, it is a belief that people are capable of developing and improving their abilities through hard work, effort, and persistence. When kids learn about growth mindset, they begin to believe they have the ability to learn and develop the skills they need to be successful. With that, they also realize that mistakes and failure are experiences that actually help them to continue that push toward reaching their goals and aspirations.

What is failure? For many of us, it’s a word we never want to hear. It can make us feel less than or even incapable. However, with a growth mindset, failure is just a temporary setback, and it’s something that can be used to motivate instead of deflate. Which brings me to the title of the book. Who would ever imagine looking at failure as a friend? This book explains it perfectly.

The beginning of the book describes failure as a beast with horns, fur, rusty orange eyes, and a loud roar. Next, we meet a young boy full of many hopes and dreams who has many “treasures” he wants to find. His goal? A journey to the moon! So, he builds a rocket ship, and off he goes. As you may have guessed, things don’t go exactly the way he planned, and he crashes that rocket ship. Who do you think shows up next? Failure of course. What does Failure do? He throws a fit, bites, and roars. However, because our little friend has a growth mindset, he is prepared for Failure to show up. He even says, “There’s no need to shout!” The boy welcomes Failure and begins a new friendship.

Moving forward, Failure helps the boy as he prepares for his second try which is followed by success! The boy doesn’t look at failure as a reason to stop trying or to give up. He uses it as fuel to help him reach his goal of being the first kid on the moon. I love the very last line of the story: “If you learn from failure and treat it like a friend, it can help you see your goals through to their ends.”

Teaching kids to use failure to give them an extra push toward their goals is so important. This book is a great resource for helping kids to begin to change their thinking about failing. They learn to “fail forward” realizing that we must often fail in order to achieve success!

I am delighted to add My Friend, Failure to my school counseling library! If growth mindset is an integral part of your school counseling program, you’ll want to add it to your library too!

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