Joelle the Whale Shark Grew and Grew

Learn how to BUILD RESILIENCE and OVERCOME CHALLENGES by using a GROWTH MINDSET while enjoying a beautiful, powerful, and engaging story with your kids!

Nobody wants to fail, including Joelle, a large whale shark who just CAN'T seem to catch any fish...yet. Join Joelle as she learns to ignore the teasing of the faster, toothier sharks and finds her own ways of hunting that play to her strengths. She learns that - despite her size - true growth comes from resilience in the face of failure. This motivational reading book teaches children AND adults: - That it's okay to make mistakes - To build a healthy relationship with failure - To build resilience and mental toughness - To find ways to play to your own strengths >For the nerds, the research behind Growth Mindset: Children with a growth mindset do better in school and have more mature behavioral outcomes (Burnette, Billingsley, et. al. 2023). Similar studies show that adults who persevere through failure have more success than those who never failed (Siegler, 2016). Finally, correlational studies have shown that when parents have a Growth Mindset, their children are more persistent when facing challenging problems (Smiley 2000, Jose/Bellamy 2012).

Amazon best-selling author Ben Okon is a children's book writer who never outgrew his childhood habit of asking "why?" and "how?" Now that he's a father of two and has to be the one giving the answers, he loves challenging himself to think through the things he wishes he had known earlier in life from the perspective of a child.

But he's not just an author, and he brings a unique analytical method to the design of his children's books. In his other life, Ben is a business leader who has developed people, product, and corporate strategies with companies like Google, Bain & Co., and Starwood Hotels. He crafts and tests each of his books using the same rigor that he employs when making decisions for some of the world's most influential leaders.

He is a regular contributor to schools and educational nonprofits, and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University.