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Using books as a therapeutic tool, bibliotherapy, can be a powerful experience. As children face new situations and demands, they typically will experience some degree of anxiety, which is normal. In fact, learning to feel distress in certain situations can help prevent children from dangerous situations. But there are also everyday worries, where children need some guidance from parents and caregivers in order to fully process their feelings. Books can help children address routine worries and fears. However, if you suspect that your child is experiencing anxiety that is excessive and uncontrollable, please contact a mental health professional. Now let’s take a look at the two stages of childhood development that children who read middle grade books are going through and the sorts of books that might ease worry during each phase.

Children (ages 6-10). During this period, kids may fear outside dangers, especially, but not limited to, natural disasters, robberies and accidents. Often, these fears stem from what they’ve heard about on the news. Transitions may be difficult, especially during the beginning of school when they must adopt new routines.

If your child is feeling powerless in the wake of a natural disaster, you might want to give them books that empower. Also look up news stories about children who have raised money for hurricane Sandy, for example, or kids who have come up with creative fundraisers for non-profits. You can also look for books that focus on small victories that help the environment. For example, you can read about a character who recycles, or works on a way to save the rain forest. The Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes is a wonderful book about a 12 year-old confronting hurricane Katrina. To calm going-to-school fears, you can guide them to some funny school stories such as the classic Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar.

Children (Middle School age and up). During this life phase, it’s normal to worry about social status and acceptance, as well as academic and athletic performance. Additionally, older teenagers may worry about their future.

For tweens (and teens), consider looking up the early years of people whom they admire and sharing these stories. You may discover that a rock star, athlete, actor or author was shy, or overcame adversities to get where they are today. Check out Elizabeth Partridge’s Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary about the brave children who marched along Martin Luther King and Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s Kids on Strike!

Stories are very powerful. You can pick a book that speaks to a given situation and present it to a child so they can understand their world, and feel soothed and calmed.

Hillary Homzie‘s second tween novel for girls,The Hot List, was published last year. She parents three boys and is always looking for ways to soothe and heal.

We hear quite a lot about the ‘childhood obesity epidemic’ these days. From Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to healthy school lunch initiatives by celebrity chefs, we as a culture are concerned about our children’s eating, exercise and well being.

As well we should be.

The problem is, these health concerns are too often framed in ways that are psychologically and culturally unhealthy for young people. The phrase ‘epidemic’ conjures images of risk and contagion, and usually is accompanied by a fear of or anger toward certain populations associated with these bodily ‘failings’. Consider, for example, that historic public health campaigns against tuberculosis became ways to marginalize poor or immigrant communities, who were associated with this disease threat, and therefore became considered ‘diseased’ altogether. ‘Health’ here became a way to justify/disguise classism and xenophobia. Similarly, public health campaigns addressing the ‘childhood obesity epidemic’ (such as this horrific Georgia advertisement) too often use the moralistic shaming and blaming of individual children and their families rather than critiquing systems, such as the food service industry, which makes it difficult to access affordable fresh foodstuffs in urban areas. Here, ‘health’ becomes a way to reinforce stereotypes and prejudice about poor communities, communities of color, and of course individuals of size.

In her essay, “Fat panic and the new morality,” which appears in a 2010 collection entitled Against Health, Kathleen LeBesco analyzes the “obesity epidemic” as a “moral panic.” In her words: “our insistence on turning efforts to achieve good health into a greater moral enterprise means that health also becomes a sharp political stick in which much harm is ultimately done.” So in addition to waif-thin images in beauty magazines, and the pervasive sexualization of even, say, young girl’s clothing, public health itself is a part what’s been called our pervasive toxic body culture – a culture which contributes to everything from self-hatred to self-harm to disordered eating and more. A culture which connects a young person’s appearance, size and/or weight to their worth, their very humanity.

The notion of obesity itself has come under some scrutiny by scholars and activists. Consider that recent research suggests that lower mortality might actually be associated with being overweight, that an entire scholarly discipline of Fat Studies has arisen, or that campaigns such as the Health At Every Size Campaign , the Endangered Species: Women movement, and websites such as Adios, Barbie seek to address toxic body culture.

As a pediatrician, parent, and writer of middle grade novels, I know that stories are an important way that culture gets shaped. Middle grade novels have the power to either reinforce or counteract the harmful messages sent to young people through both the commercial and public health media alike.

Rebecca Rabinowitz recently wrote a wonderful piece called, “Who’s that Fat Kid? Fat Politics and Children’s Literature” for the Children’s Book Council Diversity Blog. In it, she critiques the stereotypes and tropes of fat children in children’s literature: as either bully (ie. Dudley, Crabbe and Goyle in the Harry Potter Books) or a victim of bullying (ie. Judy Blume’s classic Blubber). Fatness often becomes code in children’s literature for gluttony, greed or other moral failings — just consider Augustus Gloop from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the Oompa-Loompa song says it all: “Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop! The great big greedy nincompoop! Augustus Gloop! So Big and Vile! So greedy, foul, and infantile.”

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Dubois asked “How does it feel to be a problem?” Like stories with a protagonist of color, where the entire narratives becomes only ‘about’ the problems of race, Rabinowitz urges writers not to make fatness a ‘problem’ to be solved. As she notes, many stories with fat protagonists such as Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, or e.E. Charlton-Trujilo’s Fat Angie, often portray their protagonists dieting, or exercising or otherwise trying to become ‘less fat.’ In Rabinowitz’ words,

I want to see characters whose fatness is not symbolic of anything. Characters who are fat simply because some people in the real world are fat… I want characters who complete their emotional and social and physical growth arcs without becoming less fat. I like books that confront fatphobia head-on, and I’d also like to see books that aren’t especially about fatness but feature fat characters…Allow fat characters the humanity that not-fat characters have. Banish fatness as a symbol; banish the textual message that a fat character is okay only as long as they’re on their way to becoming less fat.

Thinking about writing a character of size? Consider first if fatness is a part of this person’s myriad qualities, or if it is a singular, defining, stereotyped quality. Like race, class or sexuality, diversity of body size is a real phenomenon in the world to be represented in middle grade literature. The question is, whether we represent it in ways that reinforce old, oppressive stories or change the cultural narrative.

When she’s not writing middle-grade novels, Sayantani DasGupta teaches courses on narrative, health and social justice at Columbia University, blogs for Adios, Barbie, and speaks nationally about girls, toxic body culture, and media images.