The Chocolate-Covered-Cookie Tantrum
By Deborah Blumenthal

Ages 2+

Meet little Sophie, your basic toddler at the park, about to show us her two-year-old worst.

Sophie wants a cookie. Sophie may not have a cookie. And so begins Deborah Blumenthal and Harvey Stevenson's The Chocolate-Covered-Cookie Tantrum -- a blood-boiling catastrophe of such volcanic magnitude that Sophie turns right into a hot pepper (which my three-year-old found to be quite interesting).

This should scare any kid out of having a tantrum -- just kidding. Actually, Sophie's face gets so hot from the tantrum that she feels like a hot pepper.

Her mother stoically waits the tantrum out, then takes Sophie home to sleep it off on the couch. After dinner, Sophie gets a cookie.

Any kid who has ever thrown a tantrum will no doubt be able to relate to the feelings of powerlesness and frustration that Sophie shows in The Chocolate-Covered-Cookie Tantrum. With Sophie, we learn that the world will not crumble away in response to her out-of-control emotions, that, when it's all said and done, Mommy still loves her and that sometimes we have to wait a little while to get what we want.

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