Wilbur's Worry Clouds

Resources on anxiety for children are ever-growing and widely available. A simple search on Amazon yields a smorgasbord of stories, short videos, handbooks, guides, picture books, and CBT workbooks. It is a crowded space, which makes sense for a common issue addressed by the wide range of professionals working with children. Each practitioner often needs materials suited to their own audience and client base, but the huge supply can make it difficult to differentiate the best options of the bunch.

The purpose of Wilbur’s Worry Clouds is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to normalise anxiety through storytelling. Secondly, to provide a range of practical tools and activities to help children understand, manage, and take control of their anxiety. How the author, Karen Angel, goes about this is to bring her readers along in a story about a boy called Wilbur, whose life is very normal, doing things and enjoying what many little boys do; however, "he worries a lot". Taking the reader through his day-to-day experiences, illustrating how anxiety commonly presents itself in a child, such as speaking in front of his class at school.

The book utilises both the narrator and actor to infuse psychoeducational moments, building a repertoire of skills for Wilbur to use (e.g. his mother explaining how the amygdala works, to understand how worry clouds the brain). The core metaphor of the multi-coloured umbrella captures the range of tools he can use to handle the clouds, reinforcing the idea that he is not, in fact, broken. These are summarised and then developed into 8 activities in the second half of the book. The story itself is well-written and engaging, with colourful illustrations matching the emotional tone of the book and the developmental level of the target audience. All the common terms and interventions associated with treating anxiety in children are present, balancing both the practitioner and client needs.

The book's strength in my opinion is its broad applicability. It is suitable for clients up to age 10 and can be used in different ways, such as reading with a client in your office, in a classroom, or in a group setting. It is evenly divided between story and activities, whereas some other popular resources focus more heavily on one or the other. Overall, this is a good resource that will help professionals such as counsellors to find effective ways to work with children about their anxious feelings, through activities that combine seeing, hearing, and doing.