The Creepy-Crawly Thought

The Creepy-Crawly Thought follows a young, female protagonist as she contends with unnamed daily fears and anxieties. The negativity that “shadows her sunny mind” and “never seems to end” meets its match, however, as she makes a conscious decision to reclaim her brain and thinks about a series of fantastical ways to rid herself of bad thoughts. Among other techniques, she flushes them down the toilet, chucks them in the fireplace, and sings them away. When she is finally free of the creepy-crawly thoughts, she celebrates her victory while also recognizing that they may return. Should that happen, she asserts, she’ll use her newfound tools to defeat them once more.

The story is straightforward, despite the imperfect rhyme scheme, and is one that children will connect with. While there are no actual takeaway strategies for children dealing with anxiety in this book, the over-the-top ideas may just help children to see their fear from a different angle. For common childhood worries, the absurd recommendations will serve to refocus and remove some of the power from the trigger. Positioning anxiety as mind over matter is a little problematic (“my brain is mine and I’m the boss of all the thoughts”), however, and this book is not the best option for children grappling with actual mental health issues.

Rabby does an excellent job illustrating a concept. The colourful amorphous creatures she uses to represent creepy thoughts work to help children visualize the anxiety, and its different forms, without being so scary that it prompts new fears. The shapeless “thoughts” have silly faces and fluid lines giving them the illusion of conquerability. Beyond her handling of that impressive artistic challenge, the simple illustrations are mediocre.

I appreciate that The Creepy-Crawly Thought is attempting to put a playful spin on a serious subject and in so doing empower children to conquer their intangible fears and anxiety with humour. The potential for this book to open a dialogue about negative feelings between a caretaker and a child could do wonders towards helping build real, life-long strategies to dealing with general childhood worry or panic.