The Good Egg by Jory John

Ill. by Pete Oswald. HarperCollins, 2019. ISBN 9780062866004.
The Good Egg is verrrrrry good. It does all sorts of things like rescuing cats, carrying groceries, watering plants, changing tyres, even painting houses. If there is anything or anyone needing help, it's there to assist. Back in the store where it lived with another 11 eggs - Meg, Peg, Greg, Clegg, Shel, Shelly, Sheldon, Shelby, Egbert, Frank and the other Frank - altogether in a house with a recycled roof, things weren't particularly harmonious because The Good Egg found the behaviour of the others confronting. They ignored bedtime, only ate sugary cereal, dried for no reason, threw tantrums, broke things... and when The Good Egg tried to be the peacemaker and fix their behaviour no one listened. It became so hard and frustrating that its head felt scrambled and there were cracks in his shell, so The Good Egg left.
As time went by, it began to focus on the things it needed rather than what it thought everyone else needed and in time it began to heal...
This is a sensitive story that explores finding a balance between personal and social responsibility so that the egg, or any person really, can live at peace with itself. It's about helping the perfectionist lower their expectations of themselves so they are not always struggling and feeling failure, and, at the same time, accept that those around them will always have faults and to be comfortable with those. Self-perception is such a driver of mental health and self-imposed standards of excellence are impossible to live up to and so the spiral towards depression begins, even in our youngest students.
A companion to The bad seed, John and Oswald have combined sober text with humorous illustrations to present an engaging story that has a strong message of accepting oneself and others for who we are, not who we think we should be.
Great addition to the mindfulness collection.
Barbara Braxton