Thank you NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for letting me have an advance digital copy of this book. It was so cute and the story was amazing. The illustrations were also beautiful. I will definitely be recommending this books.

A sweet little book about using art and breath to help deal with anxiety. I am always working with my kiddo on anxiety tools and tried this one for that reason. It was sweet but not my favorite. The naming of the crayons was unnecessarily confusing. The referring to Avery as “girl” and “girlfriend” was obnoxious.

Be aware that this book references prayer and god, and works best for families who have conversations about god.

“Girl, don’t you know?” Ruby said. “We don’t have to be perfect to be useful!”

I have such mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it had some Good messages: draw out what you’re feeling to express yourself, you can be brave And scared at the same time, you can be scared and do hard things. I think those are good messages everyone, even adults, need to hear.
On the other hand, this book is full of evangelical indoctrination and toxic positivity. Halfway through the book, the message turned from processing your feelings to “ok we’ve been sad for a whole day, now it’s time to forget being sad and focus on being happy instead.” Which isn’t a great message. Neither are the messages of “well if you can’t fix it, god can.” I don’t feel comfortable reading children’s books that include indoctrination messages, which is why I can’t rate this book higher.