Frances Stickley's blue notes

The new picture book from Frances Stickley explores negative emotions frankly, giving both language and positive guidance on navigating the blues

We adults do our level best to protect children and ensure their happiness. But not every day can be a good one, despite our efforts. So do picture books focused only on positivity do children a disservice? Frances Stickley certainly thinks we need a dose of realism and her new picture book, The Storm Cloud, tackles sadness, anxiety and depression head on.

Bear wakes up with a storm cloud above his head. Even though it’s a warm spring day he feels chilly and decides to go back to bed. There’s nothing he can do to shift that cloud, which keeps on growing. Feeling overwhelmed, he refuses to go out for a picnic with his friends because he doesn’t want to be spoil their day.

The emotions described in the book are complex enough for adults, let alone very young children, but with spare and thoughtful text and clever use of colour, The Storm Cloud takes us on a journey through darkness and back to lighter times.

We all like to envisage early childhood as carefree – halcyon days – making it hard to admit that anything can ever interfere with that. We do this even knowing that children are complex beings, just like adults. Frances Stickley thinks it’s vital for us to acknowledge childhood’s darker moments without apportioning blame or guilt to ourselves. “I actually feel like we wilfully minimise those feelings because, for so many of us, they feel like personal failings – especially as parents,” she says.

Frances Stickley's blue notes — In *The Storm Cloud*, Bear moves from dark back to light, with the help of his friends. *Illustration above and top: Emily Hamilton*

“There’s such a culture of toxic positivity. Even the very idea of being sad or anxious is inextricably intertwined with, ‘What’s wrong?’ If our children aren’t happy, something needs fixing. But it doesn’t, does it? Not really. With the best will in the world, we’re never going to shield them from those feelings and surely we’d be doing them a disservice if we did.”

As a former primary school teacher and literacy specialist, she sees books as a critical way of helping children understand themselves and their place in the world. “I think books are one of the safest and most effective ways we have of helping children make sense of their emotions. There’s something about seeing a feeling played out at a slight remove – through a character, through story – that makes it feel both manageable and permissible,” she says.

Just as important, books put names, colours and shapes to emotions. This brings clarity and some sense of control. “It gives children the language scaffold for something they might have only felt as a sort of internal chaos up until that point.” And seeing feelings played out in a story also normalises them. “That moment of, ‘Oh, it’s not just me’ is huge, especially when there’s such an underlying expectation that happiness is the default. Books quietly challenge that. They allow space for complexity without demanding resolution or ‘fixing’ things too quickly.”

“There’s something about seeing a feeling played out at a slight remove – through a character, through story – that makes it feel permissible”

Fixing things – feeling better – is a process that we know can take time and honesty, and this what Bear goes through in The Storm Cloud. Once he has admitted out loud that there is something wrong, his buddy Squirrel sits with him and helps him talk about the cloud above his head (a cloud that only Bear can see), bringing comfort and care without passing judgement or minimising those feelings. It’s a message to bring comfort to children experiencing dark times, and it also supports the development of empathy – including for readers who know that there’s something up with a friend or family member.

Frances Stickley recently wrote a piece for BookTrust about the value of books which tackle difficult emotions – life’s downs as well as ups – and especially as read-out-loud choices for groups of younger children. She sees this as an important way for peer groups to process the complexities and trials of life by making connections together. Such read-out-loud sessions become a public acknowledgement that negative feelings exist for everyone and having them doesn’t make you different or weird.

She’s certain that only reading books to children about happy characters doing lovely things is a form of dishonesty, of misplaced overprotectiveness. “We approach all art forms anticipating some reflection of the human experience, and by censoring those emotions that we know children experience in total abundance we’re not only doing them a disservice, but arguably real damage,” she says.

“The cognitive dissonance that comes from, ‘Hang on. I know that I’m feeling angry or frustrated or really sad, but I’m not seeing that reflected anywhere in my cultural surroundings,’ is massive. We’re not just failing to show them what life is really like; we’re teaching them to distrust their own bodies and feelings in response to events. It’s how we end up with all the secondary issues around those feelings – the shame, the guilt, the confusion, the compartmentalisation.”

Frances Stickley is an old hand when it comes to writing books that resonate with children. Her three daughters have acted as both critical readers and influences on themes she’s chosen. “Absolutely they’re the readers and the reason, not even consciously, just by osmosis really, ” she says. “My first book, What Will You Dream Of Tonight? was a desperate cry for help to get my now nearly 14-year-old daughter to sleep through the night,” she says. “Now I can’t get her out of bed!”