Rachel Vail Helps Kids Understand Their Feelings

Children’s author, Rachel Vail, chats with us to discuss her newest book, Sometimes I Grumblesquinch. The story, a companion title to her best-seller,Sometimes I Bombaloo, tells of a girl named Katie who has big, angry feelings towards her little brother, Chuck. As readers engage in the story, they see as Katie grumblesquinches and suppresses her emotions, until she can’t hold it in and explodes, finally learning that it’s ok to have strong emotions, such as frustration, anger, and sadness, and still be loved regardless. “You can still be a really nice kid, and say no, or say, ‘that’s my chair and I would like to sit in it.’ It doesn’t make you not a nice kid. You can self-define as a good, nice, pleasant, wonderful person even if you have boundaries and defend them, and you can defend them in a very nice way.”

Vail would describe herself more as the grumblesquinchy type, not having thrown any tantrums growing up. She would feel anger, but held it in because she didn’t want to upset others. “But at some point you have to cope with your feelings, you have to think about it, you have to explore, ‘why am I feeling this way?’ And you don’t have to only be a pleasure all the time. I was a kid who enjoyed being a pleasure and I love when my kids are a pleasure. I love when they’re feeling happy and generous and kind, but that’s not their job to just be a pleasure for me… they’re not only entitled to happy and kind and generosity of spirit.”

The illustrations in Sometimes I Grumblesquinch also give readers a true sense of Katie’s range of emotions as the story progresses. “…there was something about Hyewon Yum’s art that just spoke to me that I thought was so tender, and expressive, and beautiful all at the same time, so I had a preference for her, and luckily enough she said yes…I feel like I’m going to give you the text and I hope that as an artist, the artist will find something in it, and bring something to that, and she just brought her own artistry to this family and to this story and came up with this visual vocabulary that I think is quite brilliant.”