Mental Health Awareness Month with Author Lynn Joseph: My Code Word Artwork

Here Wee Read

Hosted by Charnaie Gordon, of the blog Here Wee Read, this podcast celebrates diverse and inclusive books for kids and adults. In addition to interviewing kid lit and adult writers and illustrators on occasion, you’ll be updated on the latest bookish headlines and hear 30-second book reviews. This podcast is especially good for parents, caregivers, homeschoolers, librarians, and teachers who have the desire to diversify their bookshelves.

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Mental Health Awareness Month with Author Lynn Joseph: My Code Word

May 28, 2024 • Charnaie Gordon

Lynn's picture book, My Code Word: For When I'm Scared or Afraid, is a great recommendation to read during Mental Health Awareness Month or anytime of the year. It's a story about a young boy who acutely sees what's going on in the world and internalizes the negative things to a point where he begins to fear for his future. When everything seems most hopeless, his mother comes up with a clever solution to not only allay his fears, but teach the resilience needed to be a change agent and tackle the world head on. My Code Word is based on her own fears and emotions growing up and then as a mother of two young boys of color.

Lynn's novella The Color of My Words won an Américas Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature and a Jane Addams Children's Book Award. Some of her other books include: Coconut Kind of Day: Island Poems, featuring 13 poems narrated by a child describing her life in Trinidad, and An Island Christmas, describing a Trinidad Christmas from the child narrator's perspective.

Lynn is a lawyer and an award-winning author. Originally of Trinidad and Tobago, she has been based in the U.S. for her adult life and now splits her time between New York and Bermuda.