The Handbook of Superpowers for Cool Kids

By Mira Mallius Merja Kalm

What are cool kids made of? Bravery, honesty, kindness, generosity, and many other attributes that can be thought of as superpowers in everyday life. These qualities help us navigate at home, school, hobbies, in new situations, and they can be practiced to make us more confident and supportive. Ten stories with delightful animal characters present cases of different ethical questions. The creative layout, facts, tips and activities inspire to put these skills into practice. Perfect for primary schoolers and older, this guidebook based on positivity and mindfulness helps us to recognise these empathic skills and to bring out the cool kid in all of us. This title, developed by educator and writer Merja Kalm and illustrated by Mira Mallius, is a great non-fiction book for both individual readers to go through, as well as for classrooms to go through together. The Handbook of Superpowers is a companion piece to the duo’s second book, A Good Friend: The Superpowers of Friendship. These compelling books see a person’s virtues as superpowers which should be brought up and actively developed for a kinder world.

Publishing information

About the author

Mira Mallius is an illustrator and a designer, with a background in fashion. She has illustrated several children’s books, and she is known for her charming animal print stationary.

Merja Kalm is a teacher, an expert on pedagogy and an author of text books and non-fiction. She wishes to make the world a better place by writing. The Handbook of Superpowers for Cool Kids (2020) is the author’s first non-fiction book for children. This insightful, pedagogical and visually fun title was followed by the equally compelling book A Good Friend – The Superpowers of Friendship (2021).Through her work and exprience as a teacher, Kalm has put together touching guidebooks with which readers learn how to practice their best, most sympathetic qualities. With this work, the author emphasizes and spreads the idea of a kinder world, whether the reader is an individual, or a classroom full of students. “Compliment, thank, encourage, and love them. These five words are the cornerstones of my teaching philosophy. The school environment for me is, at best, a place of genuine encounter, interaction and doing things together.”– Merja Kalm for educational publisher Sanoma Pro