How reading and sharing stories can support children starting school

How EVERY book generates an emotional response

I’m going to keep it simple. Books are basically feelings. They’re stuffed full of them, and they generate them too.

Obviously, there are books like Ruby’s Worry, Misha Makes Friends, or Sammy Feels Shy that explicitly focus on emotional health and wellbeing. But all books generate an emotional response, even a book that might not immediately seem to be about feelings.

For example, a manual on how to fix your car can bring about a positive emotional outcome. When a trusted adult reads anything aloud with genuine passion and interest, a child will associate that with a positive experience. It could be a football program, a comic, a history book, the sleeve notes on the back of a record — it could be anything.

My mum read to me loads when I was a kid. Not the Haynes manual for our Volkswagen, to be fair, but books that she loved. And that is 100% what set me off on the path to becoming a fiction writer.

How books help us learn about the world

Nearly all books are about feelings because nearly all books feature characters who experience a wide range of emotions — joy, despair, love, hope, anger, jealousy, revenge. I’m not sure if that last one’s an actual emotion; I certainly haven’t done a Big Bright Feelings book about it yet.

Whenever we read, we’re broadening our emotional palette. We’re learning more about the world, more about each other, and more about ourselves.

The role of picture books

A key benefit of picture books is that they’re a shared medium — an adult and a child reading together, side by side, focusing on the same thing at the same time.

A picture book can bond you through laughter. Maybe it helps you build connections around a theme or topic you both love. They can also be the perfect way to tackle a problem: a gentle way to start a difficult conversation, or a sideways step into a topic that the child might not want to discuss directly but is happy to talk about when it’s happening to a character in a story.

Relating with characters

Sometimes you’re reading because you need help coping with particular feelings in your own life. You might watch how a character takes on a challenge and then apply it to your own situation.

That’s certainly true of the Big Bright Feelings books. I put my characters into situations that I know a lot of people struggle with, and then I model a clear way through so that children get a fun story and a clear idea to help them start tackling their own challenges. It’s kind of like a stealth‑help series.

How books can provide comfort

Books can be a huge comfort. You might discover a character who looks, thinks, acts, or feels like you, which is really reassuring and can make you feel less alone.

This is a huge part of why diversity in books is so important. We all need to see characters like us to validate our whole experience of life — to make us feel present, seen, and valued in the world.

Stepping inside someone else’s head

Books also offer a genuine opportunity to spend time inside another person’s head — whether that’s a fictional character or the author of a non‑fiction book.

One of the big problems with real life is that we only ever see people’s immediate reactions, their obvious likes and dislikes, and we never really know why they say or do the things they do. We have to work that out for ourselves, which is hard. But in books it’s all laid out for you, making everything loads easier. And that helps us understand the people around us a little better too.

How books solve (almost) every problem

In short, whatever the problem, reading solves it. Unless you’re being chased by a tiger — reading will not help in that scenario. You’re going to need to put your book down and run.