Sometimes our worries can be overwhelming, even all-encompassing. Learning how to deal with that is hard — especially for young kids. Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based children's book author and former Pittsburgher Jessica Whipple seeks to help children navigate their anxieties with her new release “I Think I Think a Lot.”
The book, from Free Spirit Publishing, is illustrated by Josée Bisaillon and comes out on Aug. 29. Whipple spoke with 90.5 WESA's Sarah Boden about how her own obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis helped inspire the story.
Boden: Your book “I Think I Think a Lot,” which is your second release, is about a little girl who I would put at maybe, kindergarten age. And she really does think a lot, and perhaps worries a lot, about how she treats people, about how the people around her feel, if her work is good enough. And this book is based on your own experience as a kid?
Whipple: Yes. And some of the things that the girl in the book worries about are things that I have thought. I might have said something mean to a friend, you know, in middle school, and then I worry that that made me a bad person. So, I might apologize to that friend. I might check with my parents to see if that was a normal thing to have said. Or if my apology was good enough. And so, I'd try to read the reaction.
There's an example of that in the book. Could you read that?
Sure.
“I think a lot. More than most other kids.
I know this because of Ana.
When she apologizes, ‘SORRY,’ spurts from her mouth like water from the lunchroom fountain.
Ana is off to play again before those two syllables have fully left her lips.
No one else seems to use as many words as I do. They don't have to get them all out like me.
That's because there's a lot I wonder about. Did I hurt her feelings? Is she mad at me? What if I'm not a good friend?
But a book uses a lot of words. Sometimes thousands, or millions, filling zillions of pages, making pictures with each phrase.
When I say sorry, it's like I'm writing a story with lots of details, so the other person knows their feelings matter to me.”
It wasn't entirely clear to me if the protagonist in your book has obsessive-compulsive disorder, or is just a very sensitive and thoughtful kid. Was that intentional?
That was intentional. I didn't want that to be a closed door. Because I think it's about a lot of us, in a lot of ways. We're all a little bit worrisome from time to time. I did acknowledge it in my author's note, though, because I wanted to explain my experience.
Because you do have OCD.
I do. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Yes, OCD. I was diagnosed when I was 13.
But for you, it's less about making sure things are clean or organized, and more about feelings.
Yeah, it's — in the mental health community, you might call it “pure obsessional.” It does usually start with a worry that is internal. It's sometimes, “Am I a good person? Am I okay?”
In the book, “I Think I Think a Lot,” the girl apologizes more than once. So that's her compulsion. That was my compulsion as well. Even though a lot of the obsessions are internal, and they don't come out in a demonstrable way.
This is your second children's book. Your first, “Enough Is,” deals with concepts of wants and needs, and how sometimes really wanting something can feel so uncomfortable. And also, the gradient between wanting and needing. You know, both of these books have some similarities as both to you of the inner lives of kids. What draws you to this topic?
With the first book “Enough Is,” that came from wanting to kind of teach that concept of, wanting something is uncomfortable, but that feeling goes away the more you realize what you have and understand what contentment is. So, I wanted to make the book that I didn't see anywhere at the library or at the bookstore.
And with “I Think I Think a Lot,” I was given books as a child about OCD, and they were always like workbook kind of books or clinical, like books that you'd get at a therapist's office. But I wanted to write a book that would be about OCD, but also just about worry. But a kid could get it at the library, and it hopefully wouldn't feel stigmatizing, or like work, to have to think about these things about oneself.
I think to the children in my life who I know, and back to when I was that age, and it's not that feelings weren't as complex, it was just you didn't have maybe the experience or the language to articulate them. And a lot of times everything felt bigger because you didn't have a reference point. And it's so important to take the inner lives of children seriously.
Yeah. I have two daughters and there's often so much more going on inside than I'm seeing at the surface. And I want to understand that in my kids. I want parents to understand that in their own kids. I think that's part of the benefit to having books like this available to kids, so they can say, “This, this is me. I can. I think this is how I'm thinking.”
