By Diane Alber
A scribbly orange blob explains what anxiety is and teaches one thing to try: make your comfort zone a little bigger, one small step at a time.
A scribbly orange SPOT turns up to explain what anxiety is: a feeling that makes you want to avoid things, and avoiding things makes your comfort circle shrink until there's almost nothing safe left inside it. Then it shows the way back out. Do one slightly scary thing and the circle grows. Do another and it grows again. There's no plot and no character to follow. The SPOT talks straight to your child from the page, with breathing exercises and a comfort-zone diagram along the way. It's part of a long series where each colored SPOT takes on a different feeling.
Some children don't want a story about a girl with a worry. They want the instructions, plainly, in a bright book with a friendly blob, and that's what this is. The avoidance idea is the reason I'd reach for it. Avoiding the scary thing is what a lot of anxious children end up doing, and almost no picture book names it out loud. A four-year-old can follow the picture of a circle that gets smaller every time you say no to something. That's a useful image to have around the house.