☺️🩷 Sammy Feels Shy 🩷 From bestselling creator of the Big Bright Feelings series, Tom Percival!

An uplifting story, that encourages little ones to not let feelings of shyness stand in the way of having fun.

⭐️ Sammy Feels Shy
📕 🎨 By Tom Percival @tompercivalbooks
❤️ Published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books @bloomsburychildrens

⭐️ COMING SOON - July 2025 ⭐️

Sammy loves having fun.

At home, everything feels easy. But, when he’s surrounded by lots of people, his cheeks glow a brilliant bright pink 🩷🩷🩷 and he doesn’t feel like he can talk. Lot’s of people say ‘he’s so shy!’ and that seems to make things even worse! So much worse, that he turns completely pink, from head to toe. 😳

Until… one day, Sammy makes a lovely new friend, Lily, who doesn’t see his shyness. And, little by little, having fun together makes his pinkness fade away. Until ultimately, he decides to NEVER let his shyness stop him from having fun. 🤩

Awww!!!! What an absolute treasure of a story, that’s so full of heart. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As someone who has always been super, SUPER shy, it’s lovely to see that the focus of this story is building confidence and having fun! - Because that is what is so important for our little ones. 🥰

I have to admit that I’m always a bit skeptical about books that feature feelings of being shy, because it’s SO difficult to get authentically right. But, Sammy Feels Shy had us nodding along and recognising all those little key details of feeling self conscious, with hot cheeks, and definitely not feeling confident about speaking up.

The struggle is very real, and we love how this story has captured that awkward feeling, yet remaining so reassuring and lots and lots of fun. This would be a great book to have in the classroom! 📚

The illustrations, as expected are completely gorgeous and so endearing! With lots of stand out ‘pink’ moments, coupled with bursts of colour as we see Sammy feeling back to his usual self. 🩷🩷🩷

As always, any of Tom Percival’s books are a joy to have on the bookshelf!

I love this series of books and this one did not disappoint! I use them all the time within my classroom, to help children understand their feelings, to support PHSCE lessons and to read simply just for pleasure.

I would extremely recommend purchasing this book when it is released! It is beautifully decorated, the story is beautiful and fun and will ignite some great conversations with children. Thank you @tompercivalbooks for helping some of our smallest readers understand such humungous feelings

My children and I absolutely loved this book! Sammy Struggles With Shyness is not only beautifully illustrated and engaging, but it also handles the topic of shyness in such a gentle, reassuring, and relatable way.

As a parent, I found myself really connecting with Sammy’s story. I wish this book had been around when I was younger—I was the shy one growing up, and I remember all too well the feeling of being overwhelmed in busy environments, just like Sammy.

This book opened up a great conversation with my children about what it means to feel self-conscious or nervous, and how those feelings are completely normal. The warmth throughout made it easy for them to connect, and it reassured them that it’s okay to feel shy sometimes.

A must-read for any family or classroom!

I read this with my 6 year old who has previously been a fan of this series. We have Finn's Big Fibs, Ruby's Worry and we picked Billy's Bravery for our World Book Day Book. I explained I needed his feedback for this new book. He felt that Sammy did not 'match' (alliterate) with Shy. We talked about this and eventually decided that Sean would have been a choice that he felt would have sounded better. My son also felt it was inconsistent that Sammy's Dad noticed that he had turned pink when in other stories, Ruby's grown ups do not see her worry. Apparently in another story too, a child noticed the big feeling but not the grown up. We felt that the overall arc of the story was nice though and the illustrations were lovely. These were just a few points that he felt were inconsistent.

I adore Tom Percival's Bright Feelings books. I have found them invaluable as a primary 1 teacher to start conversations about uncomfortable feelings.

Sammy Feels Shy does all of the wonderful things the other books do too, but exploring that feeling of shyness. We have Sammy trying to figure out what's going on and absolutely stunning illustrations to help visualise exactly how he is experiencing his emotions.

Most importantly, the reader gets to see how Sammy regulates his emotions eventually. We all might feel shy, but with some tips from Sammy we might find we're able to cope just a little bit better.

I was so excited to get the chance to review this book and I'm even more delighted it was as wonderful as I expected.

My daughter loves these books and this is another great one. We discussed feeling shy after we read it together and she understood how Sammy feels and felt bad for him but she was very happy with the ending!