Review - Marcy's Having All the Feels

Marcy's Having All the Feels
by Allison Edwards
illustrated by Valeria Docampo
Date: 2020
Publisher: National Center for Youth Issues
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

What do you do with all your feelings?

In Marcy’s Having All the Feels, counselor and therapist Allison Edwards explores how sometimes feeling so many feelings doesn’t feel so good at all.

Marcy wanted to be happy. Happy is all she wanted to be. But all her other feelings kept showing up—and at the worst times! There was Frustrated and Angry, Sad and Embarrassed, and even Worried and Jealous. Her feelings were there as soon as she opened her eyes each morning, and they followed her around throughout the day. Some days all these feelings just felt like a little too much and she wanted to hide!

Marcy didn’t want to feel angry or jealous. And she didn’t like feeling sad or embarrassed. Why couldn’t she be happy all the time? Then one day when Marcy’s feelings disappear, she learns that her feelings don’t have to control her, and they might even have a function.

Maybe having all the feels might not be such a bad thing. And that one discovery? Well, it changes everything!

(synopsis from NetGalley; see it on Goodreads)

This is a rather didactic picture book about feelings that will inevitably be compared to the much stronger movie, Inside Out.

Marcy's feelings are personified by little coloured creatures. Unlike in Inside Out, though, she's aware of them. Happy is her favourite, but she doesn't show up nearly often enough. After a rough day, Marcy wishes all her feelings away. But that kind of backfires because Happy disappears as well. After a day without feelings, Marcy welcomes them all back into her life with the understanding that she must take the not-so-great emotions along with the nice ones.

This might have worked had the feelings been developed better as characters. But when they're depicted as separate beings like they are here (and not merely aspects of Marcy's psyche), things can get a little confusing. You'd think Happy would be... well, happy. But she's kind of judgy, and laments early on about how she's tired of being needed. (That's not exactly a happy emotion she's displaying.)

The book is obviously intended to teach, and it pretty much hits the reader over the head with the message. It's a bit boring, and there's a bit too much text. Also, the "Tips for Teachers and Parents" at the back are weird. The way they're worded, they're obviously directed at kids... unless adults need to know how to rate their feelings on a scale of 1 to 10 and walk away to cool off so they don't make bad choices. (Yes, adults need those skills. But they're presented here as new information directed at them... not as something to teach the kids.)

Overall, this seems a bit weak. Inside Out gets the message across better in a much more entertaining way.

Thank you to NetGalley and National Center for Youth Issues for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 1/5

Overall: 1.83 out of 5

Review - Worry Says What?

Worry Says What?
by Allison Edwards
illustrated by Ayesha L. Rubio
Date: 2018
Publisher: National Center for Youth Issues
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

Allison Edwards, author of the best-selling book Why Smart Kids Worry, gives a glimpse into the ways worry whispers to young minds, and offers a powerful tool all children can use to silence those fears.

“Worry’s songs tie my tummy up in knots,
and the things he says make my heart beat very fast.
Sometimes he speaks in a whisper, and other times
his voice gets so loud I can’t hear anything else.”

Worry and anxiety are currently the top mental health issues among children and teens. Children have a number of worries throughout childhood that will come and go. The problem is not with the worries themselves, but that children believe the worries to be true. With a relatable story and beautiful artwork, Worry Says What? will help children (and adults!) flip their thinking when anxious thoughts begin and turn them into powerful reminders of all they are capable of accomplishing.

(see this book on Goodreads)

As someone who has suffered from anxiety for most of her life, I was interested in reading this book for kids to see how the topic of worry would be dealt with. I was one of those kids who was always worrying about something: dying of old age, losing my teeth, nuclear war (hey, it was the early '80s, and the Cold War was still on), the sun expanding into a red giant. I'm still a worrier, though much of that has to do with a severe case of OCD. This brings me to my main worry (pun intended?) about this book.

Simple worries, such as the ones portrayed in the story (the worry that you won't do well on a test, the worry that the other kids won't want to play with you, etc.), are fairly easily shot down because they can quickly be verified to be false (you take the test and do well, you ask someone to play with you and they say yes, etc.). But what happens when you're worrying about something far in the future? How can you prove to that little voice in your head that there really is nothing to worry about?

That seems to be beyond the scope of this book, but for kids who are bona fide worrywarts, tips on how to deal with those sorts of worries might have been helpful. There's also the matter of worry and anxiety that can be brought on by physical causes, where no amount of reassurance or self-talk is going to help because the anxiety is being caused by brain inflammation. You simply can't talk your way out of that. (For a great example of how approaching these problems from a purely psychological viewpoint can go horrifyingly wrong, check out Susannah Cahalan's story, Brain on Fire.)

If this book had been given to me when I was a child, I know that it would have made little difference. And then the worry would have been compounded, because I would've felt like a failure for not being able to get my worries under control. (I know this, because this is how I felt for much of my childhood; no matter how hard I tried, there was just no way to work around my worrisome thoughts. I still have a number of self-help books for kids sitting around as evidence that this sort of approach doesn't work for everyone.)

So I'm a bit conflicted about this one. The idea is laudable, the story is easy to understand, and the illustrations are beautiful. Would it work for kids who have mild anxiety and worry? Maybe. They might even find it empowering. But I'm concerned about the kids with more severe anxiety that might be rooted in physical causes. I'm afraid they won't get much out of this, and their self-esteem will take another hit as a result. I have to recommend this one with reservations.

Quotable moment:

The truth is, listening to Worry is ruining my life.
He never makes me feel better. He always makes me worse.

Thank you to NetGalley and National Center for Youth Issues for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 4/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 4/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 3.33 out of 5