I’ve been working on a passion project lately stemming from my own experiences with mental health. Harriet and the Blue Monkey is a rhyming children’s book that I wrote and illustrated. The story explores the symptoms of depression and helps kids to understand what might be happening either to them or to someone they know. It explains how important it is to talk about your feelings and encourages conversation between children and parents/teachers/caregivers.
Alongside the book I created a range of art prints and a classroom pack which contained copies of the book, a full lesson plan and a self-esteem based activity poster designed to help the children to recognise their own and others strengths and values.
I created a kickstarter in an attempt to self publish the book but due to some unfortunate Coronavirus timing, coupled with some learnings about kickstarter it was initially unsuccessful. Nothing worth having comes easy though in my opinion so I am now exploring how to grow an audience for the book online to better support another self publishing attempt in the future.
I am also continuing to develop the idea of the blue monkey as a vehicle for explaining mental health problems to children and exploring other executions of the concept to further expand my offering.
