How am I Feeling? Conversation Cards

Dear Brittney G.,

Thanks for taking time to write, and thank you so much for your enthusiasm about our line of Conversation Cards. It is good to know that they are appreciated and useful.

I cannot dispute your own visceral response to the Play With Your Food faces, which I created over 20 years ago. In their defense, the images have won numerous awards, including an American Psychological Association’s Gradiva award back in 2000, and the images have received consistently high praise from teachers, psychologists, therapists, parents and children.

I wholeheartedly agree that the full spectrum of emotional facial expressions can include disturbing and extreme configurations, and it is challenging to include the full scope of emotional expression without getting into some scary visual territory. The food images were my attempt to offer maximal nuance and subtlety while offering faces that are as unthreatening as possible—while having no gender, age or race.

I have heard children open up and share amazing things in response to these images, and I wonder if you might be pleasantly surprised if you gave them a try. Meanwhile, I am delighted that you find the other cards so successful. We would like to send you a complimentary set of one of our other conversation cards. Thanks so much for writing.

Best Wishes,

Saxton Freymann