#3 Children's Book Reading Notes

Penny Draws a Best Friend by Sara Shepard

Fictional children didn’t judge me. They had wild adventures
and I could go along without being a drag.

This Guardian article from July 2022 asked booksellers and publishers: Why are there so many children’s books about anxiety? Scribe publisher Miriam Rosenbloom gave an answer that rang true for me:

“I also think it’s to do with attitudes around parenting, which have really changed a lot,” she says. Parents now are more aware of the need to emotionally support children, give them emotional vocabulary, honour their feelings.

I was an anxious child. You may have heard that confession from a lot of authors, especially those who write for children. Some nights I’d be gripped with terror because I believed there was an intruder in the house even though I could hear my dad watching TV downstairs, which he often did till well past midnight, eating his habitual night-time orange. I felt I couldn’t call out to anyone. In the safety of the morning light I’d find the orange peel on the arm of the …