Riley and the Moody Monsters: A Story About Emotions And How To Get Along With Them

The Inspiration

I struggled a lot with my mental health for many years, especially in high school. Art has always been a great method of expression and processing for me, and one day I drew these little Feelings Monsters all over my notebook. They were a visual representation of my emotions — where I felt them, what they would look like, what color and body position they had. They turned into these ongoing characters that really helped ground me and put things into perspective. During the brainstorming phase, I realized I wanted to incorporate them into my capstone. Emotional intelligence is something that deserves more emphasis both in education and in childhood, so I settled on writing a children’s book. It’s called Riley and the Moody Monsters, and it follows seven year old Riley as he goes throughout his day and experiences five of his own Feelings Monsters (sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, and happiness).

The Research

Empathy is so important for so many reasons. It fuels community and communication. In the aftermath of COVID, I’ve been concerned about the children who were so isolated during their crucial stages of development. I wanted to create a tool for parents, therapists, and educators to help children fashion a deeper understanding of their feelings and develop their emotional intelligence. I also think that the holistic perspective and interconnectedness of body and brain isn’t given the recognition it deserves. By using body language, colors, shapes, and other visual methods, I wanted to show the connection. For instance, how I feel anxiety in my stomach and anger in my head and shoulders. My own Anxiety Monster is very thin with a lot of attention on the stomach, and my Anger Monster is drawn very tightly.

A large portion of this project was doing the research to back up my original idea. I dove into childhood development and concluded that 5–9 was the ideal age range for the storyline and depth I desired (Denham, 2007; Holodynski, 2009). Body language and colors were also a huge contributor to my artistic choices throughout the project. Each character is carefully thought out and illustrated accordingly. Happiness, for example, is large, round, and appears rather squishy. Happiness is also portrayed in a soft pink, which is the least dominant and most approachable color, often associated with caring and calmness (Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994).

The Process

I began the process by sketching out possible ideas for the Feelings Monsters and eventually narrowed down my options to the final results. I asked pretty much everyone who would talk to me where they personally felt their emotions and to make the physical shape with their own body for inspiration. Most people, myself included, slouched down and hung their head when asked about sadness — a prominent feature of Sadness in the book. I wrote the manuscript after that, making sure to research situations that would be relatable to a seven year old, then painted the scenes accordingly. Imbuing each page with the feeling I wanted to convey was important to me. Digitizing the art, adding the text, and editing was the most difficult part, but honestly the whole process was very enjoyable and therapeutic for me.

The Future

The purpose of this project is to provide educators, therapists, parents, and anyone else with a tool to help children understand their emotions and what can be learned from them. The term “Monsters” is intentional, because feelings can be scary sometimes! I wanted the daunting connotation from the word because the rest of the story and characters show that there is nothing to be afraid of. Ideally, Riley and the Moody Monsters will be part of a series of similar narratives. The protagonist and Feelings will progress in age and the emotional complexity will increase accordingly. While the book is geared towards children, it is for anyone who finds it useful. Embracing and expressing emotions should not be scary — it should be healing.

Sources:

Denham, S. A. (2007). Dealing with feelings: how children negotiate the worlds of emotions and social relationships. Cognitie, Creier, Comportament/Cognition, Brain, Behavior, 11(1).

Holodynski, M. (2009). Milestones and mechanisms of emotional development. Emotions as bio-cultural processes, 139–163.

Valdez, P., & Mehrabian, A. (1994). Effects of color on emotions. Journal of experimental psychology: General, 123(4), 394.