Sarah and the Whammi is an excellent resource for teachers, for adult education facilitators who work with parents’ groups, and for parents interested in understanding their children’s feelings and gaining an insight into their world.

Although the series is targeted at Key Stage 1, it has relevance across the age and ability range of primary education and, indeed, older pupils. In the training support programme, we find Sarah and the Whammi being used successfully with Years 2, 3 and 5 in Belfast and Portadown primary schools, and hear testimony of its popularity among teenage pupils.

Teachers comment on the overall value of the Sarah series as a classroom resource, particularly for its focus on building skills of empathy and respect for others. Pupils too express their interest in the programmes. A parents’ group from north Belfast finds particular value in the series support for helping young people to reflect upon personal and community prejudices.

The programme is interspersed with relevant clips from the Sarah series and observations from Joe Mahon, its author and producer. Mahon draws attention to the importance of:

• using devices – eg the ‘magic eye’ trick and the ‘wee rulebook’ – to enable children to understand difficult concepts like empathy, cooperation and conflict resolution

• using and reusing the audio-visual text in a variety of ways

• educating the heart (emotional intelligence) as well as the mind

• stimulating children at a very young age to realise that, regardless of their differences, they are all of equal value, all suffer in the same way and feel the same emotions

• empathising with others’ feelings