Alfie is a Alligator who lives in a lake with his family and friends. Alfie struggles to sleep at night, he finds that he can be happy some days but others he is sad. When he is in social situations he easily blushes and gets embarrassed and finds himself being anti-social. He feels as if he is alone. One day his mother and father notice his feelings and ask him if he is okay. He tells them everything and they support him through getting better, he can finally sleep at night after he has talked about his feelings. He finds situations a lot easier to deal with, all because he has talked to someone who cares.
My overall idea for my book is a picture book for 5-9 years olds dealing with social anxiety. As I have stated before, this is a subject that I relate very closely too and I am aware that it affects a lot of people, especially kids. Even though I know it affects a lot of children I don’t feel like many people are aware of what the symptoms are and some people mistake anxiety with depression. I wanted to tell the story and show the symptoms of anxiety and my personal way of making myself feel better which is to talk to someone about how you feel. I showed all symptoms such as feeling sad, insomnia, low, embarrassed, anti-social etc, but I also showed that you can be happy sometimes. I showed this through the character Alfie as I felt alliteration works really well in children’s books and it keeps the book lighthearted as I wanted my book to be eye catching and also I didn’t want to portray anxiety in a dark and dull way as that is not what anxiety is about in my opinion, anxiety is about feeling too much emotion all at once and that is portrayed in all the different colours and details. At the end of the story I included all types of people that children can speak too as I am aware not every child has a parent to talk too, so I tried to keep it relevant to most kids by including teachers, careers and overall family.
My overall message in this short picture book was to tell children, no matter how you are feeling, always know their is someone to talk too. It may not be everyones way of dealing with anxiety but from my experiences, if you don’t talk to someone about it, all your emotions seem to pile up and you end up feeling worse. I also wanted to show that anxiety isn’t always a bad thing, and despite the intense negative feelings you may have, you have to remember you need to find a way to balance out the emotions and let it all out which is my own personal way of dealing with my own emotions.
