Book 1 · Accountability
Name the feeling. Then choose.
A four-year-old who has lost a red block is not being difficult. They are having the biggest feeling they have ever had, with none of the words for it and none of the practice at holding it. Book one gives them the words and the practice, in that order.
60 programs built on Ellis Abel and the Red Block, written for 387 US metro areas, every principal city, and all 3,143 US counties — 257,940 place pages in all. It is a character series: one named value per volume, no doctrine, nothing to opt out of.
About Ellis Abel and the Red Block · The whole series · Campaign sitemap
Name the feeling before reacting.
Take ownership of everyday choices.
Small routines can restore a sense of control.
At home, in the hard hour
The read-aloud for the hour when a small thing becomes an enormous feeling, and the words a child needs before they can do anything else with it.
Not a technique for stopping a meltdown mid-flight, which nothing does. A way to give a child language on the calm days so the loud days get shorter.
A corner is furniture until a child has words to use in it. This builds the words first and the corner second.
The three-step morning a child can say back from memory, built with them rather than announced at them.
Bedtime falls apart at the same point every night in most houses. Find that point, name it, and build the routine around it.
Two children, one toy, and an adult expected to referee. This teaches both of them to name it before the adult arrives.
One job that is completely theirs, done without help and without reminders, and the discovery that controlling one thing feels good.
Children lie about small things to avoid a big feeling. Take the size out of the feeling and most of the lying goes with it.
A forced apology teaches performance. This teaches a child to name what they did, which is the part that actually repairs anything.
The exact situation the book is about. A favourite thing disappears and the whole world ends, and there is a way through it that is not distraction.
Leaving the park, ending screen time, a new house, a new baby. The change is not the problem — the lack of a handle on it is.
The doorway at nursery or school, and the ritual that makes it survivable for the child and the adult both.
For the age where the feeling comes out of the body first. The work is not punishment; it is putting a word in front of the hand.
Whining is a request with no better tool attached. Give the better tool and the sound changes.
The fight is never about the screen. It is about a transition with no warning and no ritual, and both of those are fixable.
Repeating yourself six times trains a child to wait for the sixth. A routine they own removes the need for any of them.
Children moving between households carry the transition every week. A routine and a vocabulary that travel with them make the handover smaller.
Everyone who has the child needs the same words, or the child spends their energy translating between adults.
Preschool, childcare and pre-K
A read-aloud unit for circle time that a new teacher can run on their second day, with the questions written out and a note for when the room goes.
Built for real ratios and real turnover: nothing that stops working when the teacher who was trained on it leaves.
One adult, mixed ages, a living room. The session runs as a single read-aloud with two question bands instead of two groups.
The transitions that eat a pre-K morning, rebuilt as three-step routines the children can say themselves.
Social-emotional material for programs already carrying family engagement obligations, with a take-home page that does that work too.
One word for one feeling, said by an adult, repeated until it is the child's. That is the whole curriculum at two, and it is enough.
Where the teaching adults change every session, a script that assumes the adult read it in the car park is not a compromise. It is the requirement.
The person with the child for most of the waking day needs the same language the parents use, handed over properly rather than assumed.
Shared story language for teams already working with a family, offered as common vocabulary and never as any part of a plan of care.
Kindergarten through second grade
September in kindergarten is mostly regulation, whatever the timetable says. This is written for that reality rather than around it.
Six-year-olds can name a feeling and still go straight to the behaviour. The gap between the two is the year's work.
By second grade ownership can be real: a job, a mistake, a repair, done by the child rather than negotiated by an adult.
The most valuable fifteen minutes in a primary timetable, with material actually written for its length and its shape.
Rules a class helped write are the ones that survive November. This is the session that writes them.
The corner works when the child has words to use in it and a way back out that does not involve a negotiation.
Six children, thirty minutes, once a week. A story spine that holds a group whose members did not choose to be in it.
Circles work when children can name what happened before they are asked to repair it. This builds the naming first.
Universal character language for a whole building, so the words in the classroom, the hall and the office are the same words.
The everyone version: one read-aloud, one action, one follow-up, delivered by the classroom teacher without a specialist.
The two least supervised and most emotionally expensive parts of the day, given the same language as the classroom.
Twenty minutes with one adult facing the wrong way. A routine the children own is the only thing that works out there.
A routine that lives in the children rather than in the teacher does not collapse when someone else is in the room.
What gets established in five days runs for ten months. This is the five days.
The people families see next
A story on the table in the room where families already are, and a take-home page that goes with them when they leave.
Shared language for a group of parents who arrive with ten different vocabularies and one shared exhausting hour of the day.
One book, one routine, left in the house. Material that keeps working between visits is the only kind that counts.
Children who have moved carry every transition twice. A routine and a vocabulary that travel with them are worth more than any single placement.
Naming a feeling is what a child can still do when almost nothing else is in their control.
Offered strictly as shared story language alongside professional work, never as a protocol and never as any part of treatment.
Libraries and community programs
The widest front door there is: thirty families, forty minutes, no fee, no referral, no assessment.
After-school and holiday programs, where the staff are young, the groups are large and nothing complicated survives.
Programs that get the children whose parents are working, which is most of them. What happens in that room is not a supplement to anything.
A story and a routine that fit a drop-in session where the same child may never come back.
Badge-shaped, volunteer-led, mixed-age. Written so the adult who is leading tonight can read it tonight.
Licensing and adoption
License the series and its session material for your own programs. You keep your name, your staff and your teaching; the books supply the spine.
One character vocabulary across a whole district, so a child who changes school in March does not change languages.
Multi-site programs where the constraint is consistency across locations with different staff and different tenure.
System-wide storytime material and copies on the shelf, with the take-home page doing the family work.
Co-publishing, imprint and distribution conversations for the series as a whole.
Wholesale for bookshops and toy and gift retail, with shelf cards that answer the question a grandparent is actually asking.
For programs funded to improve early social-emotional outcomes that need material a grant reviewer can see delivered.
For an organisation starting from four children and two volunteers. The smallest version that still holds together.
The rules that make it work
This is a character story, not a behaviour plan
Ellis Abel is a core-values series. No child is assessed, scored, diagnosed or labelled anywhere in it. It gives a room shared language, and it stops there.
Big feelings are not misbehaviour
A four-year-old at full volume is not defying anyone. Treating the feeling as an offence teaches a child to hide it, which is the opposite of the skill.
Name first, always
Every attempt to fix a feeling before naming it fails, and it fails loudly. The order in the book is the order in the room.
Ownership is small and specific
"Be responsible" means nothing at four. One job, done alone, every day, means everything, and it generalises on its own.
Adults go first
The adult naming their own feeling out loud in front of the child does more work than any session. Children copy what they see under pressure.
Routines beat reminders
A routine a child can recite is theirs. A reminder an adult repeats is the adult's, and it has to be repeated forever.