Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Monsters with a Mission: How Sarah Sparks Is Helping Kids Tame Big Emotions
What happens when a devastating brain injury leads to an unexpected creative breakthrough? For Sarah Sparks, it meant birthing the "Monsters on Mill Street" series – vibrant, heartfelt stories that are transforming how children handle big emotions and life's challenges.
Sarah's journey began with a Thanksgiving fall that resulted in a traumatic brain injury, leaving her unable to perform everyday tasks. During recovery, these monster characters emerged as her "life raft," helping her process family challenges while healing. Today, these stories have become powerful tools helping children navigate everything from explosive anger and ADHD to social anxiety and resilience.
The genius of Sarah's approach lies in how her monsters connect with children on their level. Rather than telling kids what to feel or how to behave, each character faces relatable challenges while discovering practical solutions. Albie in "The Angriest Monster" teaches grounding techniques using the five senses. Max shows how satisfying organization can be. Becks helps high-energy kids recognize appropriate times and places for movement. Sky tackles the painful reality of "masking" to fit in, while Drake demonstrates finding joy in small moments during overwhelming times.
Parents and educators share remarkable success stories – like the little girl going through her parents' divorce who adopted Albie's calming techniques independently after repeated bedtime readings. This transformative power comes through stories children genuinely enjoy, allowing them to internalize emotional tools through repetition and engagement.
Beyond creating meaningful books, Sarah partners with Love Smiles to bring comfort through stories to children battling cancer. She understands firsthand how books can provide normalcy during life's hardest moments, recalling how her own mother helped her find joy during homeless periods in her youth.
Discover how these lovable monsters are changing lives at MonstersOnMillStreet.com, where you can explore the books, donate to pediatric cancer patients, and find educational resources to help the children in your life build emotional resilience – one monster at a time.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne. Today we're welcoming the compassionate Sarah Sparks award-winning children's author, mom of three and the heart behind the Monsters on Mill Street series. These aren't just bedtime stories. They're lifelines for kids navigating big emotions, tough changes and the chaos of growing up. Rooted in Sarah's own journey through trauma and healing, including a life-changing brain injury, her books help children name their feelings, face their fears and build resilience with heart and imagination. Recognized by the Choice Awards, her stories tackle real-life challenges like anger, adhd, anxiety and fear, reminding kids and grown-ups, by the way, that calm and courage is the way to go. Sarah also donates her books to the Love Smiles program, which helps pediatric cancer patients, proving that stories can provide comfort and entertainment as children heal. Today we're going to talk a little bit about all of her books, including her two newest releases, and we will talk why self-confidence matters and how one book can change everything. Sarah, I'm so glad to have you here.
Speaker 2:Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, I did read all your books. I got them all on Amazon and I love the illustrations. They are all unique monsters. By the way, what inspired you to create your stories around monsters? What inspired you to create your stories around monsters?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad you love them. They are definitely fun and silly. You know it's interesting. I didn't set out to create a children's book series. I didn't set out to create a book about monsters at all. You know, what ended up happening is one day it was Thanksgiving a few years back and I slipped and fell and I fell in one of the worst rooms in the house you could fall in. I fell in the bathroom and there's a lot of hard surfaces there and I hit my head off of I don't know how many quite a few. But what ended up happening is I ended up being taken to the ER. I had a traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the start of something that I really wasn't prepared for. I wasn't expecting, because what ended up happening after that is you know, there's so many things that we take for granted when it comes to our brain, everyday tasks like reading a grocery list, playing with our kids, driving. There's just so many things that we do, unconsciously, I think. And after that head injury, I couldn't do those things. I run a small business and I was struggling with that because I couldn't read emails. Even the words just wouldn't stay on the page. They kept floating around a lot. I couldn't retain them. Like I said, I couldn't even shop at a grocery store. So all of these things had just sort of upended my life and I was feeling like I couldn't touch anything or do anything without it breaking. It was a very, very strange, strange feeling to have where you couldn't think through things. But amidst all that, for some reason these stories I could see these monsters so clearly and I knew they were monsters and I started writing and it was a lifeline for me. You know, when you feel like the world is falling apart around you, you kind of cling to what you can do still and what you can do well and where that hope is, you cling to it like a life raft, and so these monsters were my life raft.
Speaker 2:What I realize now, I think looking back on it, you know I mentioned little things like playing with my kids was even hard Because when you have a traumatic brain injury, there's challenge that you have with outside stimulus.
Speaker 2:It can be very hard to process noise and movement and things of that nature, and kids are noisy and they move around a lot and so I had to work extra hard at those relationships at the time and what was interesting is, as I look back on it now, I see these monsters and I realize, you know, I was writing our life, I was writing what we were living, I was taking the challenges that my kids were facing and that we were working through as a family, and I was capturing them and I was writing them down and it was my way of holding on to them, I think, and holding on to those moments and those memories, before my brain forgot them and let them slip away, and really it was my way of working through, I think, all of the challenges that we were facing in that time because of my brain injury as a family, and so that's how they came to existence. It's a really long-winded way of saying they were just always monsters and they were my kids.
Speaker 1:They were a part of you. You can feel that you were able to put them on the page. What a gift.
Speaker 2:It was therapeutic. I've always been a storyteller but I've always told other people's stories and this was the very first time when I paused and stopped and I told my own stories. And, yeah, I was telling our lives. I was telling what we were living, Like I said, the challenges that my kids were facing when they were dealing with big emotions and didn't know how to cope with them, when they were dealing with anxiety and we were talking through that. How do we overcome those anxious feelings? Or my favorite one, the messiest monster? You know what family doesn't have a moment where their kids are going from activity to activity and toys are getting left about or the art project is still on the dining table? So these were the little moments where they were the teachable moments, when we were trying to encourage my kids to grow and learn these sort of soft skills and how we were teaching them those soft skills. That's really where these books are coming in. That's how I was teaching my kids these soft skills.
Speaker 1:I truly appreciate this series on so many levels. You know, our children's mental health has never been more important, especially in the world that we live in right now and there's so much coming at our kids. And what we need, now more than ever, are resources like Monsters on Mill Street, books that are positive, uplifting and filled with hope. You know, because there's so much negative out there, we need stories that say you can do this, you know we're here for you. Come talk to us, let's figure this out together. What I love most, and I love so much about your books but is how your books open the door for parents to sit down and talk with their kids like what you kind of just touched on about hard topics in a fun, engaging, meaningful way, and you've said, I hope, to give kids the language, courage and imagination to understand themselves, and that mission shines through on every single page. I just wanted to let you know that.
Speaker 2:That is so good to hear because it means that I'm doing something right. That's that is so good to hear, um, because it means that that I'm doing something right. You know, when people say that, um, when we hear that from from you, from parents, from teachers, um, when folks come up to me and they say this book made a difference, um, in my child's life, and I I hear that so many times, um, you know, I, I recall a story that a mom had told me once the family was going through a very difficult divorce, and you know, divorces, it's never easy on anyone involved.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it was especially difficult on her little one. And the little girl was going from house to house, you know, back and forth from one parent to the next, and you know the mom was saying how she could see. It was so very hard for her to really even understand what was happening and how that was manifesting in her little self was she was getting angry and frustrated, she couldn't control this. Sure, she was getting angry and frustrated, she couldn't control this, sure. And so you know the mom would expect it, you know her little girl would walk through the door and she knew that that day, when she walked through the door and she was coming from the other parent's house, she was going to be this big bundle of emotion, a tornado, and the mom had to, she was planning for that, she, just she expected it. But one day the little girl came home and she, she was very quiet and she sat on the couch and she just started, you know, playing with her toys and feeling her blanket. She had a very soft, fluffy pink blanket and the mom thought, you know, this is, this is a little weird. You know, this is abnormal, what's, what's going on? Yeah, and you know the little girl said I just I need a moment. I need a moment and my blanket just feels so soft and I just wanted to feel it and I just needed a moment.
Speaker 2:At the mom, we had exchanged information when she had bought my books as we had met at a conference. And she texted me immediately after and she said you will never believe what happened. We have been reading these books together every night at bedtime. She was gravitating toward the angriest monster on Mill Street. This is a monster that has explosive, big emotions in the book and she wanted to read that over and over. And what this little girl had actually done through this book is she had taught herself grounding techniques, so she was using her five senses to calm her anger and frustration in that moment. And the mom said this is amazing. She's taught herself this because she's identified with the character in the book, because she's loved the story so much and we've read it over and over that she's actually internalized that, learned that, and it's stories like those you know when you hear them. I'm doing my job right as an author, as a children's book author, if that's how children are receiving and families are receiving these stories, and it's an amazing feeling.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful story and when I read the Angriest Monster, it was the same thing. You know, when I saw those grounding techniques in there, it was so beautifully done because I have three autistic children and those are the kinds of things that you know. It's so visual, they can actually look at it and see and that you can do those things see, hear, taste, all those different things to bring you back to center and I thought that that was so beautifully done in your book. What you're doing is helping parents have these honest conversations beautifully done in your book. What you're doing is helping parents have these honest conversations. You know you're creating a safe space where children feel seen and where they are supported.
Speaker 2:And the amazing thing is, what I really love about the creation of these stories and how they come together and the way they come together, is that never in any of these stories do we ever tell a child what to do or how to feel. Or you know, you don't know. Like you said, the angriest monster. You don't actually know why the angriest monster is angry. But through the lens of this, monster.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. That's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, you know, there are so many reasons why we can feel anger in this world.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're little somebody could have drawn on your paper, or you didn't get to go, and you know go to the activity you wanted. Or you know your mother wouldn't buy you the candy bar at the checkout aisle in the grocery store. It could be any number of reasons or it could be a very serious reason on the grocery store. It could be any number of reasons or it could be a very serious reason. You know, like the little girl whose parents were going through the divorce, they may not even be able to articulate why they're feeling angry, what that situation is, but they feel it and it feels like your fur is on fire and you could huff and puff tornadoes and you want stomp earthquakes and you just feel like you're going to explode.
Speaker 2:And that feeling is how we're connecting with the kids. We're trying to give them a character they can really relate to and then through that character's eyes, through those stories, the kids themselves are coming up with the solutions to those challenges. They're identifying with the monster and they're identifying with the solution because they're feeling it and they're coming to those realizations themselves. It's never an adult or grown-up saying this is how you handle a situation when you're angry, because I think when we're dictating to children, it doesn't. You know, they may learn something from it, but does it really stick the first time or the second time or the third time? When they feel it themselves and it's experienced, then it's more likely to stick.
Speaker 1:And if they love the story and are reading it again and again.
Speaker 2:They're getting that message you know over and over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I think that they can really connect with these monsters.
Speaker 2:And hopefully, like you said, with it being so visual and colorful and fun that they're connecting. And you know, I remember when I was little I always wanted my mom to read the same books over and over again. Yes, yes, I had them memorized and she was probably sick of reading them. But hopefully, you know, that's what I want with these books. I want kids to want to read them and then get those underlying messages.
Speaker 1:Another great aspect of the book the Angriest Monster was when we're upset, we really can't see the solution, or anything for that matter. And what I loved about it is how he calmed down and he saw the beauty around him. And how true is that when we're in the thick of things and we don't notice that the solution, we don't see the beauty right in front of us. So if you could talk more about that and what Albie learned in your book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Albie is our angriest monster, and what we see him go through is this transformation. Again, we don't know what he's mad at, but we know he's mad at something. And he's so mad that his size grows to the size of his anger. His physical body grows so he's up past the rooftops and up toward the stars, and so we see that unfold in that feeling of anger unfold. But then we see this moment where he is just so overwhelmed and he says you know, this is not what I want. There has to be something that can help me put this all right. And so he takes a deep breath and he thinks you know what can I hear, smell, taste and see? And he starts to pay attention to those little things around him.
Speaker 2:You know, the cool breeze, he can taste the salty tears that are rolling down his cheek. And eventually he sees this rainbow. You know he can see a rainbow and he watches the colors of the rainbow fall and bounce off the rain.
Speaker 2:The rain is symbolic of his tears. You know, he floods Mill Street with his, with his tears, and causes chaos. And so there's a lot of things there. There's, there's deep breathing, so so calming techniques through through breath. There's grounding techniques through the senses, finding the five things. What can you, you know, see, smell, taste, hear, feel. And then there's also this idea, which is really cool. You know, a lot of folks use glitter jars or those calming. You know they'll shake it up and they'll look at the glitter and they'll watch the glitter fall.
Speaker 1:My daughter does that.
Speaker 2:I think it's a great tool. It's so, so calming, in the sense that the glitter is almost like the storm you're feeling and as you're watching it you know your heart rate is going down. You're actually it's almost symbolic of your mind calming and clearing and that storm clearing through this glitter jar, and so that's also what we kind of see through this rainbow at the end and the colors that are falling and bouncing off the raindrops in the rain. And the really neat thing is is, I think, especially with Albie's story is when you get to the very end. Yes, his tempers calm down, but there's still this huge mess that he's left in his wake.
Speaker 2:And when we throw a tantrum sometimes our anger. It leaves scars and he rolls up his sleeves and he starts getting to work fixing all that chaos he caused and so there's that sense of responsibility and ownership at the end too, that we try to bring out through this.
Speaker 1:I loved that because in the book you know you're showing that anger itself isn't bad, but simply a feeling that needs to be understood and expressed in a safe, healthy way, without hurting themselves, others or anything around them. I think that that was a really important message in the book.
Speaker 2:And hopefully that again, as kids read this over and over, it becomes a part of them and they begin to practice those tools and techniques over time. I think that's you know. I was thinking about this the other day, not just with the Angriest Monster, but also with some of the newer books that we have coming out too with the Awesomest Monster on Mill Street, with the Strongest Monster on.
Speaker 1:Mill Street. Yeah, we'll talk about them yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. I mean, I'm excited about them. I think they're my newest favorites. But I think with all of these you know the tools and techniques as kids practice them over and over and they become a part of us. Then when we need to fall back on those things, when things go terribly wrong in our lives, which sometimes they do. Life is not perfect.
Speaker 1:They do that's life.
Speaker 2:Hopefully these are so ingrained in us that they become our habits, because we tend to fall back on our habits when things go topsy-turvy. And if this is habit for us and if we're familiar with it and this is our safe zone, then these are good skills to be building up in that safe zone. Sure, habit-forming skills, habit-forming toolbox that we have.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely. I do want to touch on the messiest monster, because I loved Max. He is so cute. There is a part in the book where he's cleaning and organizing and like what you were just talking about with the glitter, it was satisfying. It brought like this satisfying feeling in me, as also an autistic individual, an adult that organizing and looking at those couple pages where he's putting everything in its place, I was like, oh, that it even brought in an emotion within myself.
Speaker 2:And I have to tell you it's. You know, cleaning can be hard. Some people love to clean, some people really like things nice and orderly, sure, and that's great. I am not one of those people who falls back onto that naturally. My kids are not those types of people who fall back onto that naturally. I think it's the ADHD in us. Honestly, I have it and I've passed it along to my kids with flair.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:They've got the best of me.
Speaker 1:That's so funny.
Speaker 2:It's a little more challenging for them because their brains are moving so quickly. They want to do an art project and they get so excited and they break out all the markers and the glitter and the glue and the paper and the whatever else they can get their hands on, we have a whole cupboard of crafty stuff that they'll just open and empty and then they'll want to run outside and play.
Speaker 2:Oh, let's go play soccer. Oh, you're putting the swimming pool out for later. I want to do that now, and they'll leave it all behind. There'll be puzzle pieces on the ground or there'll be something that they've worked on, and it's not like they were intending to leave it all behind. They just got so caught up in the moment and they had to do the next thing, the next fun thing, and so, with Max, I think, bringing that out that they're not, they're definitely not being naughty, you know what I mean. It's not a bad thing. They're being kids, they're enjoying life, they're having fun, they're learning and in that process.
Speaker 2:sometimes we get a little messy and so it's, you know, it's just reminding them that, okay, let's put this away, let's, let's. What is that memory trigger that we need to remind them, as parents, to tidy up their things? And so that's what you'll. You'll hear me saying in our house, a lot is what would Max do? You know you're going out to play. Let's look at the living room floor. You guys just did puzzles. What would Max do? And so it's a trigger in our house now to oh yes, I have to put this away before starting the next fun thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I loved that because you know it really does help parents use Max to encourage responsibility.
Speaker 2:We have classroom posters as well that we actually we put on our website and teachers can use too, and Max is one of them and the big banner over it is what would Max do, and so it's a way of of helping to teach to classroom organization, especially at the beginning of the year when kids are trying to get those, you know, systems in place and processes in place in a new class and so, yeah, it's what would Max do, and it's a nice way of making cleaning and making organizing fun, I hope.
Speaker 1:And Bex in the Bounciest Monster. She had a little bit of ADHD, I would say a lot of energy needed, help with self-regulation, for sure, you know, bex is the definition I would say of high energy. And for families navigating ADHD or sensory needs, how can this book help them?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, You've hit the nail on the head with that book. I mean all the books. Like I said, they're based on my children and they're based off of, in particular, adhd challenges that we've had to figure out and come up with new ways of communicating. And high energy is so prevalent in my household, my middle daughter. She was actually the one who first inspired Bex's story in the Bounciest Monster on Mill Street. I used to say her default state was upside down. She would watch TV upside down. During the wintertime. We had to put one of those mini trampolines in our sitting room because she had so much energy. We'd have to say go bounce on the trampoline, just go count, see how many times you can bounce on that little trampoline. And she'd get up to like 400 times and she still wasn't tired.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:So it's, you know, high energy for them is normal.
Speaker 1:They're just bursting. They're ready to go.
Speaker 2:That's their baseline, yeah it's their baseline, their baseline, and as parents, it can be tiring sometimes. If I'm honest, I want to keep up with them, but we have so many other things that our minds are focusing on, you know, and we don't always have that same level of energy at the same time that our kids might.
Speaker 1:And why not? Why doesn't that happen?
Speaker 2:I wish, I wish, if we could bottle it, if we could just bottle that energy and share it, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Take a drink of it, and so we can, you know, meet them where they are.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and so you know, I think it's through Bex's story. It's a way of saying a few things. One, you know, it's okay to have energy Bouncing is fun, being energetic is fun but there's a few things that we need to sort of think about. You know, we need to think about the space around us, the people around us. You cannot do a cartwheel if your grandmother is sitting on the couch right there because your feet are going to kick her. Like let's not do that in the house right by a person who you might hurt. You know it's not the right time or the right space. Just like Bex, she bounces through the playground, she almost gets hit by the swings. She bounces through a picnic. She splashes mud all over everyone. Her bounce is just out of control.
Speaker 2:The really cool thing is, you know, I was talking with a preschool teacher when these books first came out and we were really, you know, pulse, checking them and testing them in classrooms to see what the reaction was. And I had this preschool teacher come up to me and she said you know, I read this with our four-year-olds right, they're little. And she said I have never seen a group of kids that were so invested in the well-being of a character as they were the story, and they would be raising their hands and they'd be saying does she know what she's doing? She can't be doing that. Look at the mess she's making. Look at what she's doing, you know. They recognized that her energy was a little. It wasn't necessarily always again the right time or the right space. She needed to be aware of the people around her.
Speaker 1:You really hit on something else, because life can take us through so many spiraling pitfalls, unfortunately, and I love how you're going after the really big emotions like we keep talking about and you say that with an estimated I mean this was really big one. In 12 US, children ages 3 to 17 are experiencing some form of social anxiety, and an estimated 5 million adolescents are experiencing at least one major depressive episode each year. I mean, are those numbers correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, those numbers are the latest numbers on those stats. Yeah, so anxiety is a huge problem among kids now and it's a rising problem amongst kids now, the reason we could debate and talk about what are the causes, what are the reasons. I think folks are really still trying to figure that out, but the numbers hold true and I think that's hard to hear as a parent, it's hard to hear as a teacher as well, and I think what we find at least what I find in a lot of the conversations I have with teachers is that folks experiencing the kids, experiencing these anxious feelings are experiencing them at younger and younger ages.
Speaker 1:I know that for a fact because my three littles their anxiety. They're all on medicine for anxiety and they went on it very young and I know that that's and we try and that's one of the things that I was thinking when I was reading these books. These are such great tools that wouldn't it be great if we had more of these types of things where we didn't need more medication?
Speaker 2:We need these tools in our homes. We need these tools in our classrooms. We need whatever support systems that we can create and muster, whatever support resources that we can create and muster to do a couple things. One, to tell kids it's okay to feel those feelings. You're not alone. Sometimes you feel very isolated and alone and there are ways to work through it. You know, when it comes to social anxiety specifically, sometimes it can feel like it's very isolating. Specifically, sometimes it can feel like it's very isolating. You know, my that particular book was written. It was inspired by my oldest daughter and what she was going through from from a social perspective. And and how, how did we handle those conversations? How are we? We we talking about anxiety? How are we talking about? How are we talking about anxiety? How are we talking about?
Speaker 2:You know, you may see all your flaws. You see the bloopers real, right? You know, in movies we always have those bloopers where we see the bloopers real, but the people around us only see the highlights. So it's like kids have almost these little monsters on their own shoulders telling them you know all their faults. They're picking up all the little tiny mistakes they make. Oh, you didn't say their faults. They're picking up all the little tiny mistakes they make. Oh, you didn't say the right thing there, and their minds are moving so fast.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:Especially, too, if you have ADHD. You've probably already come up with a million different scenarios as to how a social situation can go in a split second, and you've already figured out what the most disastrous elements of those social interactions would be. And so you know, allowing folks the time and space to one talk about these things in a safe way where we can bring up that message that you know, you are awesome, you have gifts, you are wonderful just the way you are. Yeah, right, and true friends and the people that we build relationships with in this world. We build those strong relationships because of our gifts, but also because of our flaws. These folks take us for who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your newest books are spot on. I mean they all are, but they address social anxiety, depression, sadness, and they do help provide the tools to grow stronger through the process not try to get around it, not try to get away from it, but going through, which is so important. And the awesomeness monster beautifully tackles overcoming social anxiety and building self-confidence. Can you tell us more about Skye?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Skye is. She's a wonderful monster she is. She has a really really wonderful, rare gift she can shapeshift. She can change who she is to fit any situation. So if she wants to reach something up on the shelf, she can grow really, really long legs. If she wants to fly, she can sprout wings. So she can change who she is to fit any situation. But she is worried about what her friends will think of this gift if they find out, and so she hides herself, and we get this situation where she has this amazing opportunity.
Speaker 2:It's actually a talent show on Mill Street and the Monster Talent Show, where she has this opportunity to show it off. Show off your gift, show off your skills, show off your talents and she gets excited. She thinks this might just be my moment. I can show off my skills, everyone will be so delighted, it's going to be great. And she practices really hard, she throws herself into it, and what ends up happening, though, is when the big day comes and her moment on stage comes. She panics and she freezes, and she quite literally has a meltdown that you know. She melts off the stage and ends up going through the pipes on Mill Street just to run away and pipes aren't made for monsters, and so they start blowing and there's water fountains and the fire hydrants and everything is just exploding on Mill Street and she's causing this chaos in her wake and she thinks, oh my goodness, everybody saw that, everybody saw my failure, everybody saw that moment when I was at my worst, and she's sad. But what ends up happening is she ends up actually getting new friends because of it, friends who think, actually that's pretty cool, what you can do, your talents, your skills, that's cool. Okay, it may have gone a little haywire, but that's you and that's special.
Speaker 2:You know, through her story I think we encounter two things. One is that understanding that people love you for you, but also this idea of masking. You know, shape-shifting of this monster was a very intentional superpower that I chose, because I think, especially with girls, we tend to mask. When we're feeling anxious or scared or when we have a, you know what we consider to be a flaw, we'll hide it. And in a social situation, I actually I watched my daughter and her friends occasionally. They would, they would all do this. They would ask, someone would ask a question. It could be as simple as oh, do you like this movie? What do you think of this movie? And the other person answering would kind of pivot it back and say, well, what do you think? They'd want to know what the other person thought first before they would stake a claim on how they felt they were waiting to change yourself to fit that friend group or what you think is acceptable.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really important thing for us to flag with kids, especially little girls, as they're growing. It's important to be your true self and it is okay to like the things you like and to do the things you do. You may love robotics. That's great. Go and do that. Celebrate that skill. Robotics, that's great. Go and do that, celebrate that skill. Or you might just, you know, you might be a helper. You might be the first one to lend a helping hand when someone needs it. That's amazing, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Own it you know, right right, yeah, don't be ashamed. Just don't be ashamed in who you are. And you know, this is a great message for adults too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think we all need this message. I think we all need a lot of the monsters in those cheating messages.
Speaker 1:I agree 100%. I mean I loved how brave Skye was and how she takes a chance even though she's scared, and that's such a great message because rarely, rarely, things go as planned right. I mean. So this is something for all of us, and I love how you show that it's not the end and you can circle back around and you can recover, and those are such great lessons. And I love that this story also helps her with the friends. Like you said, that's a completely different message on its own. It's not about having those superficial friends. I mean, you have to find out who your true friends are.
Speaker 2:The most meaningful relationships in life come when you are just yourself, right. You can't pretend to be someone just to fit in. It doesn't work. It's not sustainable. You have to be comfortable in your skin in order to build those meaningful relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, embarrassing moments, honestly, are just a part of growth, and I think that your book shows that it is growth. It's not failure. Now you have another book, the Strongest Monster on Mill Street, with the theme of resilience and redefining strength, and it is a really important book in these times. So tell us about Drake.
Speaker 2:Yes, so Drake is a dragon. He is the biggest monster on Mill Street. He's super strong, super talented. He's the type of guy that does everything right. You know things just kind of go his way. But you know, we know that just because you try your hardest, you know, and put in that effort. Sometimes challenges still strike and so and that's what happens, strike.
Speaker 2:You know he's carrying this big load. One of his gifts, of course, is carrying things. He can carry lots of loads, silly things back and forth places. But one day the weight of his load is too heavy and he encounters a storm. That just it's a storm he cannot beat, he cannot fly through. It just hits him so hard, hard and it knocks him back and I think you know as grownups, there's a lot of metaphors with that.
Speaker 1:I related.
Speaker 2:You know, we can carry great loads with us around all the time and sometimes we can carry them with ease, but sometimes we're just going to encounter things that we can't conquer on our own. The challenge is too big and it knocks us down, and so he ends up in this deep, dark woods. He's lost, it's still raining and pelting on him and he thinks I'm going to hide away in this cave and wait out the storm. But even the cave is dark and scary and it's not comforting to him at all. And what we end what ends up unfolding is you know, drake sees this little it's actually a bug, it's a slug, and it's glowing. And it glows, this little bright glow and it multiplies and it lights up the whole cave.
Speaker 2:And the dragon realizes, you know, this one tiny little thing has shone so bright that it's able to light up the darkness. And he starts to think what are all of the other tiny things in life that maybe I haven't appreciated before? But now I'm going to hold on to. I'm going to hold on tight to them in this time of need, in this time when I'm feeling sad and down and depressed and I'm trapped in this cave and trapped in this darkness and he holds on to them and it brings him hope and it gets him through the storm and eventually the sun does rise on the other side of the day and the storm clears and he can fly home. But it's that process of thinking what am I grateful for, what brings me joy, what do I love in life? And holding on to those moments and those things when times are tough.
Speaker 1:There's also. You know, there's nothing scarier than the unknown, and if someone asked me where is your scariest place, I would say the unknown. Scariest place, I would say the unknown. And I love how adaptability is such a standout, you know, in all of your books actually and it's such an amazing tool that we need, as we need to adapt to whatever the situation is that's going on in our life and to adulthood. We all have to do that and we are learning all the time. Did writing these books help you with your own emotional healing?
Speaker 2:There was a lot of sort of reflection as I was writing these books. I think actually the most powerful reflection that I had was when I was writing Drake's story. This book is especially good for not just parents, but also teachers, school librarians, because you never know what a child is going to be carrying with them when they walk through your doors on any given day.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There were so many instances when I was a child where we went through things that I never told my teachers about. I held them tight. Nope, I didn't even tell my friends about. No one would have known. One of the examples that I can give is, you know, in high school my mom and I we had to leave our home. We weren't able to stay in our home anymore and we didn't have a place to live. We didn't have a place to go.
Speaker 2:I think I spent my junior and senior year of high school bouncing from, you know, relative's house to relative's house. I think I spent my entire senior year sleeping on my aunt's couch in her living room, and so we were living out of suitcases. We didn't have anything to our names and I didn't tell my friends at school. They had no idea. I didn't tell my teachers. Nobody would have known what we were going through. And you know my mom. She's an amazing woman. She went back to school, she got her nursing degree. She did everything in her power that she could do to make our lives better. But I remember sometimes during that, those moments we would run away together. We'd go to actually Dunkin' Donuts and we'd get these little egg and cheese sandwiches. They were like a dollar at the time and we'd get them and we'd get in the car and we'd drive to the cemetery and we would park in the cemetery by where my grandma was buried. She was buried under this beautiful tree and we'd just sit under the tree and we'd have a picnic.
Speaker 2:We'd talk about the things that brought us joy, We'd talk about the things that were happening in our lives and we'd laugh and we'd have those little silly moments. I realized when I was writing Drake's story I was passing this message on to my kids and I realized that this message was something my own mother had given me and instilled in me in those moments where we were together and talking about the things we loved during what was quite possibly one of the hardest moments we had had in our lives at that time. Think about it. Why were we at the cemetery having a picnic? Probably because my mom needed a hug from her mom. She wanted her mom to tell her everything was going to be okay. So it was our way of coming together as a family and remembering joy and remembering love and holding on to those moments. And that's, I think, what I captured when I was writing Drake's story.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely beautiful and I'm so sorry that you went through that, but it sounds like it made you stronger and I love that you turned your pain into purpose. It sounds like to me.
Speaker 2:I think it made all of us stronger. My mom is an amazing woman. She is the strongest woman I know and I have to tell you you know it was hard, but I remember the good things about that time more than anything else. Oh, and my hope is so. I know I was in high school when all of that was going down.
Speaker 2:But my hope is, you know, if we read stories like Drake's story to kids when they're young, and if it's a book they love and they want to read over and over again and they're getting that message of how do you get through the darkness, my hope is it becomes a part of them. It becomes a part of their coping skills. Because, again, when we go through these moments of challenge in our lives, we tend to fall back on our safety zone. What are our habits, that we're used to? Our habits are what gets us through the hard moments and the challenges, and if we can help children make these a part of themselves and integrate it into their toolbox when they're young, then whenever that strikes, whenever that moment, whenever that need strikes, that's what they're going to fall back on.
Speaker 1:Right. The younger the better. You know you touched on something too that it's hard as a parent, because we go through things too. We're in pain too, and do you have a message to other parents who might be in that same balancing act, trying to heal ourselves like your mom did, like you did with your traumatic brain injury, while we're also trying to parent?
Speaker 2:You know, I think the biggest message is simply you are not alone. With the rise of social media and everybody being on Facebook and Instagram and everything, it can feel like everybody else's lives are perfect. Everybody is managing perfectly.
Speaker 1:It does sometimes.
Speaker 2:It's overwhelming almost. I look at other families and I think their kids are in all of these club sports and all of these activities and they're running from this activity to that, and they're going on holidays and I think I don't have the money to go to Disney this year, Same and so it's a lot of I mean, it's a lot of pressure, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It is. It's a lot of pressure and like we're touching on. You know, I've got three kids with autism and I do. I go on other people's Facebook and things like that, and sometimes I can't even look and I just and. But then I have to be because I'm very thankful for what we can do and what we do and the blessings that we do receive in our own family, and so I mean there's a takeaway from that, you know, and there's nothing in jealousy, there's nothing in looking at other people's pages and getting upset about it and coming back to yourself and being grateful for our own, the positives that are going on in our own lives.
Speaker 2:Looking at what another person does and being happy for them, applauding them and saying that's wonderful. I'm so glad you got that opportunity, that experience. Isn't that a great thing that you got to do? And so having that separation of we can appreciate what other people are doing and isn't that great. But we're doing wonderful things too, and you know we all have challenges and they might look a little different. They've got their it's there somewhere. We just don't see it. And so love them for who they are and applaud them through their wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, jealousy is another one of those really big emotions, and that's interesting because I always try to turn it into being their cheerleader. What you're touching on is being happy for them, you know, and so if I feel even an inch of it, I'm always like you know what Great, I am so happy for you and I really try hard to be one of their biggest cheerleaders.
Speaker 2:Maybe that will be the next one. Maybe the next book will be the Jealous Monster on Mill Street. I don't know Well.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's a really big emotion. There are so many of them. Why Mill Street?
Speaker 2:I've been asked this many times before. There's even a Mill Street school where I live and folks will say, do your kids go to Mill Street school? And I say no, they don't. But it's so funny, it was just, it sounded wonderful, it sounded like alliteration. The Messiest Monster on Mill Street was the very first book that was written in the series and was the very first book that was written in the series, and so the messy, the monster in the Mill Street, just kind of flowed off the tongue and it stuck as this world that we could build with these monsters. So it was just fun to say I love words, I love playing with words.
Speaker 1:Me too, and I love that your book is in rhyme.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, my goodness, rhyme can be. When it's done right and it has that great meter and that flow, it can be just fun to read. It's like a song.
Speaker 1:So I also wanted to talk to you about the illustrations. We touched on it a little bit, but talk about your illustrator and the personalities of your monsters and the other characters in the book, because there are so many that are just kind of even like a side character, but they're so beautifully drawn and they're just so fun.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I love my illustrator. She is amazing. She's based in the UK and I have to tell you she is just an amazing woman who has so much fun doing what she does. And when she started working with me on this book series, I think she fell in love with the monsters just as much as I did, because you could see through her drawing and the way we were working together, how that silliness and that fun and that quirkiness they were coming out in the illustrations. For sure. It's just. It's so amazing when you work with someone that also loves what they do.
Speaker 2:There were times when the monsters didn't exactly like we started and the early initial iterations of them didn't match the vision I had. Drake is a really great example for this. He skewed a little young, it looked like he could be a vulnerable character, and so I sat down with my illustrator and we had this conversation. We said you know he needs to be strong, because I want to convey that no matter how strong you are, challenges will still hit, and so I want him to appear like he's a force to be reckoned with. And so we had these conversations and we saw the character evolve and then we got the character that we got today. So it was really a back and forth conversation with her and it was a joy. It was an absolute joy to work with her.
Speaker 1:There were times that I just stared at the page. They conveyed so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's silliness. You know you look at a page and this whole page could be unfolding in some sort of monster catastrophe, whatever the book might be presenting. You know the street could be flooded or the pipes could be exploding, or you know the monsters got eaten by his mess and now he's stuck in this weird new world. But the critters that she has on the page, the extra little things, I love them. It's fun and the kids point them out and they're like you've got like 43 eyeballs on that page. I'm like you've counted them all. You know they're like yeah, we think they're googly eyes from the arts and crafts table and it's fun to hear what kids think of all these extra bits and bobs that she's snuck in these pages. It's really great.
Speaker 1:So I also want to talk about your partnership or your dedication to Love Smiles, and what is Love Smiles and how can listeners support this mission to get books into the hands of children battling cancer?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Love Smiles is an amazing organization. It's an Illinois-based nonprofit that stretches across the country. What they do is well. It was founded by an amazing woman. Her name is Jenna Kmitch.
Speaker 2:She founded this organization after going through and experiencing what a family experiences when their child is diagnosed with pediatric cancer. Her daughter was just a few months old when this whole journey started for her. Oh wow, she was just so little and she went through many, many rounds of chemotherapy. You're so focused on the task at hand and all the medical appointments and the tests and the procedures and helping your child through this that she said sometimes we'd pack and go to the hospital and I'd realize I never even packed a book. I didn't think about those comfort items that we sort of take for granted when we're not in those situations.
Speaker 2:And she said the one thing that she wished she had. She wished she had a book so she could cuddle with her daughter and be in that moment. That was normal for them, you know, that's when they were their best, when they were sitting and cuddling, and she wanted those moments with her daughter. And when she forgot to bring a book, she didn't have them, and so she knew that if she was going to give back to other parents. She was going to help other families through these moments, some of the hardest moments in their lives. She can't cure cancer, she can't fix or stop what's happening to them, but she could give them that moment of comfort and normalcy, that moment of escape. You know, when you're reading a book and you get absorbed and you're giggling and laughing. Her charity, it runs the gamut of age ranges in terms of pediatric cancer and the goal is to bring moments of comfort to the children and the families during that hard time.
Speaker 1:There's nothing like laying down and reading a book with your child. I mean, I think that even though I have two olders and three littles, I still remember that connection I had with my two olders. You know, for five years I had the privilege of being a photographer at a camp for kids with cancer and their siblings, and it was truly one of the most moving experiences of my life. The strength, the joy, the resilience of these children and their children, you know that's just so important. They're battling this horrible disease and they still. We just want them to be a kid still. And you know this is a cause that remains incredibly close to my heart. I love that you not only support it but actively bringing awareness to it through your books, and what a meaningful gift to families navigating such difficult journeys. That's so important.
Speaker 2:It is, and kids deserve a chance, like you said, to just be kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To be playful and joyful and happy, regardless of what they're going through. They deserve that. She teams up with publishers and with authors to help fuel this pipeline of books that go out to these children, and I actually am honored. It's a way of feeling like you really are making a difference in someone's life. So that's what we're doing. We're trying to encourage folks to go on Monsters on Mill Street website, to go on MonstersOnMillStreetcom.
Speaker 2:We have a section that's dedicated to Love Smiles and to consider donating a book. We put them at a really great, wonderful discounted price so that we can fuel this pipeline of stories going to these children. We need people. We need people to step up and say I want to help too. Let's do this as a community together and let's get these books in the hands of the kids who need them.
Speaker 1:Before we know it, school's going to be back in session, and so how can parents or teachers use Monsters on Mill Street as part of either a summer reading or a classroom discussion on social-emotional skills?
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, there are so many ways. So I love the idea of summer reading. Number one this is the perfect time to introduce Monsters on Mill Street as a family, because I think you know, not only do these summer reading lists help with that summer slide, we're always looking for ways to stop that slide back, and how do we help our kids retain all the growth and the skills that they learn during the year. So it's great. Summer reading is great for that, but it also does two really cool other important things. One summer is a time when I think you almost when you're a kid you have permission to have fun. Summer is fun. That's what it is when you're a kid, right, and so reading stories that are sort of that help with that fun. Reading fun stories, stories you want to read stories for enjoyment. That makes books very closely tied to summer fun and it lays that foundation, that reading is fun, so that's number one, that reading is fun.
Speaker 2:So that's number one. And number two is, as parents you know, we're always looking for, I think, moments of learning or moments that we can sort of instill wisdom into our child.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know you're never going to turn down a learning moment, are you?
Speaker 1:No, no, not at all.
Speaker 2:Right. And so I think that you know, when it comes to helping our kids choose books, whether we're going to the library, to the store, we're getting something on Amazon, whatever it might be. Sometimes, as parents we can just bring in and curate some of those books that we want those kids, our kids, to read, with life lessons in them that we want them to sort of take on and learn from. So that's the hope is that you know we're introducing these books to kids at a time when it's fun and we're opening up conversations. Parents can use these books as a jumping off point.
Speaker 2:They can say have you ever felt like Elby? Have you ever felt anger like that? Or what do you think Elby should do? What would you do in that situation? What do you think Bex would do in that situation? Taking time to think Bex would do in that situation, taking time to pause during the stories and ask those questions oh, what do you think that monster needs to do to fix that problem? Do you think you can fix that problem? Right? Those are questions that get kids thinking.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so it's a fun way of sneaking in a little bit of teaching in the summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need that.
Speaker 2:We need that, and then likewise for teachers, you know, bringing those into your curriculum. So many schools have curriculums, whether it's an SEL curriculum or they're calling it sometimes a life skills curriculum. Now, regardless of what you name it. It's teaching those soft skills that are going to make kids successful. Help them be successful. You know kids with soft skills are more successful in school. They can carry that through to adulthood. So how do you teach those? And a lot of schools are asking that question.
Speaker 1:These books, help with that. They can look at the poster and say what would Max do, Right?
Speaker 2:You can look at the poster. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know I mean educators, ptos, everybody. People can buy a book for Love Smiles and go to Monsters on Millstreetcom which, by the way, when you click on it it brings you this big monster. Uh, he's alive yeah, he's alive.
Speaker 2:so we do. We have an animated video on the front page of our website that cycles through our first three monsters that we did. So you get helby, then you get x, then you get bex. Um, and those animations, actually we we we've made some interactive videos as well, um, which we have on our YouTube page, and they're ways of getting kids up and wiggling and they're like wiggle breaks, the brain breaks, where kids actually get thrown into the story, and they're helping Max escape the mess. Or they're helping the monsters escape Albie's tantrum and meltdowndown and they're helping Albie take deep breaths and calm down. So they're the monster in the video. It's done from the child's perspective and so that's also what we've got going on there too. So it's the whole point is to make this fun. Learning should be an adventure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah. Yeah, because that's where kids connect in play.
Speaker 2:We learn through play.
Speaker 1:How can people get a hold of you? I mean MonstersOnMillStreetcom. What else do you do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so, also on MonstersOnMillStreetcom. So we've got a section for author visits as well. So I do go out to a lot of schools in the Illinois area but also around the country, and what we do is we have several different programs. So we have a pre-K through third grade program, and then we also have an older program for fourth through eighth graders. And of course, for the older kids we're focusing a lot on not just stories of resilience and helping them grow through the monster stories, but also writers' workshops.
Speaker 2:So we take them through the character development, we give them a behind-the-scenes of what went into making this book. How do they craft their own stories, what's sort of the process that they can do to really flesh out that plot? And then for the younger kids, we do touch a little bit about that fun storytelling because we want them to start looking at stories in a new way, create their own characters, be creative, draw pictures, make up games and stories of their own Sure. So there's something for everyone across that whole age range. When we go out to schools it's a lot of fun. It is so much fun in school visits.
Speaker 1:I'm homeschooling my eight-year-old and I can tell you that I'm going to be using this.
Speaker 2:Well, we also have educator kits as well. Brings in some of those creative writing prompts as well.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I see so much opportunity here to help teach him. So today we've talked monsters, mayhem and some seriously meaningful life lessons, and Sarah Sparks proves that the best stories don't just entertain, they empower. If today's episode moved you, grab a copy of Monsters on Mill Street, gift it to a family member who needs it, give it to a teacher, and remember one of the greatest superpowers that we can give our kids is emotional resilience, wrapped in a monster costume. So to our amazing listeners, thank you for being here. We appreciate you more than you know and always remember there is purpose in the pain and there is hope in the journey and healing in the stories that we share. Until next time, keep showing up, keep talking and keep believing. We will see you next time.
