Dream Up Now™

THE TEEN JOURNAL FOR CREATIVE SELF-DISCOVERY

with community outreach advisor Lesley Holmes

$15.99
Now available from Free Spirit Publishing, a leader in academic resources since 1983. Teens feel a wide range of sometimes-overwhelming, often-fluctuating, intense emotions. To help teens understand, manage, and channel their emotions into passion for the life they want to live, this guided journal includes 36 creative activities. Crafted by community leaders across North America, these activities encourage teens to create, draw, listen to music, and put pen to paper as they process emotions, discover more about themselves, and pursue what they want out of life.
Now available from Free Spirit Publishing, a leader in academic resources since 1983. Teens feel a wide range of sometimes-overwhelming, often-fluctuating, intense emotions. To help teens understand, manage, and channel their emotions into passion for the life they want to live, this guided journal includes 36 creative activities. Crafted by community leaders across North America, these activities encourage teens to create, draw, listen to music, and put pen to paper as they process emotions, discover more about themselves, and pursue what they want out of life.

Dream Up Now offers a safe space for creative self-expression of all emotions, both positive and negative.

Every emotion is valid in this journal, and teens are encouraged to move from dark (negative) to light (positive) emotions. For example:

From tired to fired up

From confused to confident

From jealous to appreciative

From loss to peace

Using simple journal prompts and art project ideas, with plenty of room for writing and reflection, Dream Up Nowis a powerful tool for navigating emotions and self-reflection. It also includes information to help teens advocate for music programs or start a club in their school.

How to Use Dream Up Now.

Students engaged in the arts report significantly higher levels of school attachment than non-arts students, and its well known that music can improve skills in math and reading while also promoting creativity, social development and self-worth.

Dream Up Now gives teens self-directed space to explore the fluctuating emotions of adolescence through creativity, reinforcing a young person’s well-being by providing actionable tasks and creative play to encourage a sense of belonging, acceptance, authenticity, and honoring one’s own voice, unique emotions, and creativity.

Despite being surrounded by peers and family, teens often feel lonely and misunderstood. Many yearn for respite from day-to-day stress, while seeking social acceptance, confidence, and a strong sense of self.
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We believe that when a young person is experiencing feelings of happiness, tolerance, and power, they’re in the perfect state of mind to begin building the life they want to live.

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Readers can start anywhere in the journal, beginning with whatever emotion they’re feeling at the moment. Every dark emotion is presented with its opposite, light emotion. Each set of emotions was contributed by recognized, trusted leaders from arts, wellness, and educational communities.

These diverse individuals represent a variety of creative industries. They’ve mined their life experiences to show how they dealt with the same emotions young readers are experiencing today, and how they discovered various artistic means to deal with the struggles common to teen life. They show how pursuing your passion and talent can lead to a fulfilling life and career, and they offer the advice they wish someone had given them. 

Dream Up Now also includes bonus activities for self-inventory, reflection, mindfulness, and expressing the hardest struggles of teenage life, as well as pausing to shine a light on all that is wonderful and good. 

Engaging with this self-guided journal, a young person builds resilience and self-sufficiency by learning how to deal with challenging emotions.

Even better, teens learn how to leverage a great day. Dream Up Now offers a blueprint for making the most of positive feelings, offering straightforward advice for finding new friends, interviewing for a job or mentor, getting organized, or trying out for a sports team, school play, or band.

Dream Up Now has resources for finding your passion ...and pursuing it. It has tools for setting up a club at school and information from VH1 Save The Music showing how to bring music education to an under-served school district.
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There’s this old Mexican saying: “Al que ha de ser charro, del cielo le cae el sombrero.” Literally, “the man born to be a horseman will have his hat fall onto him from the sky.” Some people read that as his fate is inescapable, which is understandable. But personally, I think it can also be that the tools for his destiny will find their way to him and that they will fall onto the top of his head from someone above, or somewhere in the sky.
— Antonio Manuel Chavira, author and producer

Our Team

Rayne Lacko

Rayne Lacko is a Young Adult author and advocate for the arts as a form of social and emotional well-being. Cohost of a youth creative workshop, an annual writing camp, and a teen arts showcase, she inspires teens and their families to use creativity—through writing, art, and music—to stimulate positive change in the world. Rayne lives near Seattle, Washington. 

Rayne’s SPEAKER BROCHURE

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Our Team

Lesley Holmes

Lesley Holmes contributes her expertise to several educational and arts nonprofits benefitting children, teens, and older adults in and around Los Angeles. Her work promotes alternative therapies, music education, literacy, and food as a pathway to healing. A lifelong chef and baker, Lesley is a Los Angeles native who enjoys early morning hikes in the Hollywood Hills where she lives with her two teenage daughters.  

Lesley’s SPEAKER BROCHURE

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Since 1983, Free Spirit Publishing has served as the leader in social and emotional learning. Free Spirit’s mission is to help children and teens think for themselves, overcome challenges, and make a difference in the world. Today more than ever, young people need social and emotional guidance. Free Spirit aims to meet all young people where they are and to support them in developing their talents, building resiliency, and fostering a positive outlook on life so they can reach their full potential.

For nearly 40 years, Free Spirit’s learning tools have received recognition from esteemed institutions including the American Library Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, YALSA (Young Adult Library Society of America), the National Mental Health Association, Mensa International, the Autism National Committee, the Chicago Public Library, the Girl Scouts of the USA, and many others. Free Spirit has millions of books in circulation around the world, and is a WBENC-certified Women’s Business Enterprise. This certification enables Free Spirit to foster diversity and continue to develop diversity programs.
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