If you have small children of your own, you have experienced their feelings at new situations. Author, Ana Crespo, has taken these experiences one at a time and written about them from a small child’s point-of-view in her “My Emotions and Me”  series of  books. On the front cover of each book in the top right-hand corner, there is a ‘Mood-o-Meter’ with the emotion this particular story will be exploring. In J.P. and the Giant Octopus, the emotion is that of being scared.

Little J.P. has never ridden through a drive-thru car wash. Since there is a large octopus on the car wash’s sign and J.P. has been playing about being a shark, J.P. imagines the darkness inside the car wash is part of the ocean. He imagines the flexible scrubbing arms inside the car wash as those of a giant octopus. Fear and terror fill J.P. as his view of the world is covered up with the foaming soap, scrubbing arms, and the scritching scratching sounds. “I almost cried. I was so scared.”  With the loving support of his pet dog sitting next to him,  J.P. states, ” Then I remembered I am a brave shark. I showed my big shark teeth… I made some sharky sounds.” Soon the ride was over. “The giant octopus just wanted to play.”

This book could be used by an adult and a child to open up a discussion on fear, to recall with a child when he is fearful, and because it is written at such a beginning reading level it can be read again and again by the child himself.

Ana Crespo includes her own take on this in “A Note to Parents and Teachers from the Author.” This is taken from her own life experiences and research she has done. She states she is not a behavior specialist of any kind.