How do you talk to your children about death? Or anxiety, or fear. That’s the question a new book collection by Kiwi author Avril McDonald aims to answer.
There are five books in the Feel Brave series: covering self-confidence, grief, anxiety and fear, mindfulness, and making relationships.
Each is beautifully illustrated and written in verse; think Dr Seuss-like rhythm and you’re on the money. Aimed at four- to seven-year-olds, it’s self-help for kids – or as McDonald puts it, “Little stories about big feelings.”
The idea for Feel Brave was sparked five years ago, when McDonald’s daughter Maggie, then three, had a nightmare. McDonald helped calm her with a technique she uses to manage her own anxiety, after having her first panic attack aged eight.
“Maggie had a nightmare about a big monkey jumping on her back, so I just did a simple cognitive behavioural therapy called reframing, where you tell the story back to them but change it to make it funny. I made the monkey small and cute and told that story. I thought, ‘Maybe this is the creative outlet I’ve been looking for.’”
McDonald, 43, had trained as a primary school teacher, working here and in the UK, before moving to the Greek Islands as a tour manager then working in digital entertainment in Australia.
After meeting her now fiancé, Rob Kidman, the couple moved to his native England, where McDonald is still based. It had been a high-flying few years both professionally and personally, with the couple having two children: Maggie, eight; and Luke, six.
But the combination of having kids and turning 40 had left McDonald both wanting to do something creative and to serve the world around her.
After creating Maggie’s happy bedtime story, she started tinkering with the idea of a book that tackled some big issues. Over the next few years, she put her ideas together and researched the gap in the market.
She did a survey asking parents what subject they needed help discussing with their children, and “death was the clear winner”.
At the time, McDonald was dealing with death in her own life.
“I was back in New Zealand with my children because my mother had cancer and was dying. We had a wonderful final six months with her. During that time, like a lot of people, I felt both really afraid and really brave. My children had a lot of questions; death was really real for them so I wanted to write about it.”
The publishing process is never quick, but McDonald’s book had the extra challenge of being hard to categorise. An illustrated kids’ book, written in verse, which deals in death and anxiety. How do you go about selling that to the world?
“At one point I joked it was either ahead of its time… or just crap,” says McDonald. Yet she managed to secure both an agent and a global publishing deal last year.
But the happy ending of this particular story is that her timing has been impeccable as the conversation around kids’ mental health gains momentum. There have been two unlikely cheerleaders in its corner: Kate Middleton’s charity of choice is Young Minds Matter, aimed at improving understanding around children’s mental health.
Then Pixar film Inside Out took audiences into the mind of a teenage girl and highlighted just how lonely and confusing growing up can be. Suddenly Feel Brave – and the corresponding teaching guide – doesn’t look niche; it looks prescient.
Because kids are the target audience, McDonald doesn’t just want to rely on parents picking the books up off the shelves: she wants to get them into schools too. After securing the publishing deal, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the computer app that forms part of the educational programme.
She hit her funding target after just five days, another confidence boost she hopes will be reflected in book sales.
“If I can sell some books, then the next part of the journey begins. I can get funding to take it into schools and make it easy for teachers to get social and emotional health being taught from the ground up.”
