Behold an illustration from the brilliant Catherine Newman‘s forthcoming children’s book (for kids 10 to 14), How to Be a Person: 65 Hugely Useful, Super-Important Skills to Learn Before You’re Grown Up. The book is basically a funny and readable graphic novel-style list of instructions on how to be a mensch (and not incidentally, how to be proud of yourself and get others to like you out there in the big world). Comes out in March, 2020. Pre-order at your local indie bookshop or online at Indie Bound, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

Illustration by Debbie Fong. I like the glass manatee.

Why is this a good apology? It uses the word “sorry,” it takes responsibility, it shows understanding of the impact of the offense, it emphasizes the feelings of the person of the apologizee rather than the apologizer. (In other words, it’s not one of those “I suck, I feel so so terrible, I hate myself, I’m a bad person” apologies that are more about the emotional state of the speaker than the listener and practically beg the listener to reassure the speaker that they’re still a good person.) And this apology clearly went well! Mom is pleased! However, if you know your mother’s gonna be really upset — unlike this Not a Regular Mom, a Cool Mom — you still have to apologize.

For this to be a truly great apology, the kid would have to offer to pay to replace the cost of the manatee either through their savings or by docking their allowance.  If the manatee is irreplaceable or if the mom actually did hate the manatee (Snarly would very much like a glass manatee, but chacun à son goût, she she said Frenchily) and the kid is quite sure of the mom’s taste, they could buy a replacement objet on their own.

SorryWatch, which collectively has four children (all older than the target audience but IT IS NEVER TOO LATE), looks forward to reading the whole book.