Be Your Best Self is a message that is being shouted loudly and proudly by both children and adults everywhere. But how exactly do you do it? How do you be your best self on a day to day basis. That’s exactly what Danielle Brown and Nathan Kai aim to do with their book – Be Your Best Self.
Danielle Brown is a double Paralympic Gold medallist and five time archery world champion. Nathan Kai is (or was at the time of writing) a seven year old member of MENSA, a public motivational speaker and an elite athlete, as well as having a CV longer than most people three times his age. Together that have written this book to help children find an answer to the question “How can I be my best self?”
The day my review copy of Be Your Best Self arrived it was left on the kitchen table along with a bunch of other paperwork that had arrived in the post that morning. When she came in from school that day, nine year Little Miss C instantly spotted it and picked it up saying “ooooh this looks interesting”. I’ve not been able to get the book off her since!
From the small bit of the book that I was allowed to read before she took it off to her room I could see that it set out a really nice, easy to follow framework for how children should dream big and then find the steps they need to take to turn those dreams into a reality.
LMC is firmly set on a dream of being an author, but just a day after reading this book she launched into a conversation with me about how she can turn that dream into a reality and how she has written in her notebook the steps she needs to take to make it happen. How reading as much as she can now and studying hard in English lessons at school is her first step.
She also spoke about how the book’s sections on staying focussed and managing distractions had already helped her to concentrate in some of her school lessons, and how in one case her teacher even awarded her a house point for ignoring some boys who were trying to distract her during an English class. If that’s not the book in action then I really don’t know what is!
She also spoke about how useful it was to read the bits in the book written by Nathan. To hear things said by someone closer to her own age than an adult is.
I think one thing that really helped LMC relate so well to the book was the way that it spoke in a language that she was already very familiar with from school, about fixed mindsets and growth mindsets. She tells me that they have whole school assemblies on the power of growth mindsets and it’s almost as if the book has just validated for her so much of what her teachers have been telling her at school.
The fact that she’s so absorbed in the book and has taken it with her to her Dad’s house for the weekend so that she can “read it and learn from it before school on Monday” speaks volumes. Thank you Danielle and Nathan for helping my daughter be her best self!
Be Your Best Self is available to buy online here. RRP £12.99 Published by Button Books in October 2019. ISBN 9781787080386
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Be Your Best Self for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.