Moving on through my book basket on feelings, today it’s time to look at some picture books that deal with feelings of worry.
Not a Worry in the World – Marcia Williams
Williams is a favourite of ours. Her cartoony style, with lots of little jokes hidden in borders and margins, is well known for tackling big themes and literary classics, such as Sinbad or Robin Hood.
But she uses this style effectively here for dealing with worries. By bringing them to life on the page, we can explore their ‘nasty nature’, how they seem to get bigger or feel overpowering – and what we can do to bring them down to size again.
The books is available in the UK – the link above is a .com one – but I put it in so you don’t miss out on what the pictures are like. One big advantage is ‘showing’ potential worries – a good way to get them into perspective, and out of our imaginations.
This is a longer read, but it does go through a number of different worry situations. It can be a helpful one to return to – for where a situation may not be a worry at the moment, it may come up in the future, and offer a solution for then.
Winston was Worried – Pamela Duncan Edwards, Benji Davies
This is a newer addition to the collection, but quite an interesting one, because it deals with deeper stories of ‘bad things happen to me’.
Winston the dog gets a splinter in his paw, and is on his way to the vet. He meets various friends on the way who encourage him to join them, but he can’t because of the splinter.
As he tells and retells the story, the splinter becomes bigger and bigger in significance, bringing him to repeat his belief ‘everything always happens to me’.
Caught up in this inner story, he also fails to see the misfortunes that affect his friends in turn – much bigger ones than his own splinter.
By the end, the splinter is gone – but a new worry is there to take its place. However, he is about to see what has happened to his friends – and potentially to put his own situation in perspective.
This one is quite light in tone, and there are some useful comedy mice about the place to spot as well, but the pattern of Winston’s responses is perhaps one that an adult can gently question with a child.
Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency – Cressida Cowell
Before we knew of Hiccup at all, we met his author, Cressida Cowell, through her picture book heroine Emily Brown, and Emily’s trusty rabbit sidekick, Stanley.
In fact, we started our appreciation of Emily with this book, a later one in the collection of Emily Brown stories, but one that we still enjoy a lot.
Emily and Stanley can be relied on to have various adventures – and they do, this time joined by Matilda the elephant. The trouble is, Matilda’s mummy keeps phoning up and worrying about Matilda in various ways.
What is interesting is the way that Matilda’s mummy’s worries gradually transfer to Matilda herself. After concerns about getting her socks wet and so on, Matilda becomes overly cautious about joining Emily Brown and Stanley at all.
What I love about the story is the way that the three of them rescue Matilda’s mummy from the terrible great greyness that has overcome her at the office where she works.
Matilda’s mummy is now much less worried, and able to get involved in adventures herself. In a nice twist, when the office phones her with a trivial concern, she is able to respond at an appropriate level – but I won’t spoil the surprise.
====
Worry is a broad topic – and one often dealt with in much more detail in chapter books. But worry is still there for younger children, whether of the real and threatening kind, or of the true but blown out of proportion kind.
Again, by exploring responses to worry, and ways in which worry feeds itself, it offers junior readers a perspective on their own situations, or those of friends.
Another time, I’ll deal with situations of sadness or depression – less familiar in children’s books perhaps, but valuable still. Lest it seem that all these are concerning, let me encourage you that the stories turn out well – just as we hope for our children’s own mini crises.