EMOJI
CARNIVAL
Two buses carry exactly twenty-two recurring personalities from carnival to carnival. Eleven represent positive emotional strengths. Eleven represent challenging emotions every child recognizes. Difficult emotions are never villains; stories focus on what feelings signal, what choices follow and how people repair, connect and keep going.
Positive Crew
Joy, Courage, Kindness, Curiosity, Gratitude, Patience, Confidence, Hope, Empathy, Calm and Teamwork.
Challenge Crew
Anger, Worry, Jealousy, Sadness, Frustration, Fear, Embarrassment, Impatience, Loneliness, Grumpiness and Confusion.
Joy & Anger and the Midnight Parade
A missing lantern list turns into a fairness investigation. Anger must separate evidence from accusation; Joy learns that keeping things “positive” can silence a real concern.
Open Book 12 →Courage & Fear and the Night Maze
A lighting failure forces Courage and Fear to distinguish bravery from recklessness, caution from avoidance, and feelings from evidence while they redesign the maze safely.
Open Book 13 →Kindness & Loneliness and the Closed Gate
A missed gate-change message becomes a story about belonging, privacy, consent in helping, intent versus impact, communication design and repairing systems instead of making assumptions.
Open Book 14 →Where? There!
Curiosity and Confusion play a picture-led search game with up, down, behind, under and there.
Open →Mine? Yours? Share!
Gratitude and Jealousy use a shiny drum to practise mine/yours words, asking for a turn, one-beat waiting and gentle turn-taking without forced sharing.
Open Little 05 →Picture-led; labels, sounds, repetition; 0–15 words/page; roughly 50–200 story words.
Highly illustrated simple stories; 15–50 words/page; roughly 400–1,000 story words.
Story plus substantial illustration; 50–120 words/page target where prose carries the scene; roughly 1,500–4,000 story words.
Longer narrative/comic chapters; richer vocabulary, motives and choices; roughly 5,000–15,000+ words depending on format.
Every finished ARQS Kids book must ship with a unique professionally designed front cover and back cover; E. H. Ackerman, J. D. Ackerman and ARQS Press identity on both covers; complete interior layout; page-by-page illustration or photography where the format requires it; publishing metadata; proofing; and final release QA.