One of the editors, Rosie Levenson, sat down with Kim Bowers to learn about her recently published books.

How old are you and where are you from?

I am 25 years old, and I am from Las Vegas, Nevada.

What are your pronouns?

She/her/hers.

What year/level in the School Psychology program are you?

I am a first year Ph.D. student.

What is your book called?

My book is called Big Emotions, but there are two versions, Big Emotions, Seeds of Faith and Big Emotions, Stepping Stones.

Can you please explain why there are two editions of your book?

When I first wrote this book, I wanted to honor my commitment to my faith, which is the basis for what I do. Big Emotions, Seeds of Faith is for people who also share the Christian faith. This version uses scripture, biblical principles, and prayer in addition to the tools that we use for parents to discuss children’s emotions. However, I recognize that not everybody shares that faith, so I wanted to honor that and share similar information in a way that is applicable to more children, which led to creating Big Emotions, Stepping Stones. The Stepping Stones version uses guiding principles and calm-down tips to support its readers. Writing both versions of the book was a simultaneous process.

What is Big Emotions about?

There are two goals of the Big Emotions book. First, the book serves to give parents the tools to have conversations with their children about emotions and emotion regulation. Second, the book provides strategies for children to have healthy discussions that enable them to process their emotions. We tried to achieve this goal through the structure of the book. It’s not a narrative story, but rather is driven by pictures, using what I call scenario dyads. With the scenario dyads, each pair of photos address the same situation where the left image exhibits a child with an unregulated response and the right, a regulated child in the same situation. The first step is to dissect the pictures through the guiding questions such as “How do you know what the child is feeling?” “What is their body showing?” “What does your body look like when you feel the same way?” Then, readers move to the practical section, which uses techniques like validation and normalization, to provided scaffolded discussion around emotions. The last steps vary depending on the version of the book, those who read the Seeds of Faith version will engage with the scripture and prayer and those who read Stepping Stones will engage with the calm-down tip.

Who would benefit from reading this book?

Any adult or person who interacts with children in any capacity! It is meant for children from early childhood through elementary school years.

What inspired you to write this? Where did this idea come from?

The entire premise of the book started when my older brother and I were kids. My mom has a background in Child Development and really wanted to find something to help us develop healthy relationships with our emotions. However, there weren’t many socioemotional learning resources available for parents.

Eventually, she did end up finding a book series to use but didn’t agree with all of it. So, she would use the books to prompt her own discussions with me and my brother. Because of this, she always had a dream to write her own books as a tool on emotion regulation, and eventually drafted ideas, but never submitted anything.

When I returned home from studying Psychology in college to get my Master's degree in Education, my mom and I often talked about the different experiences I was having with my students and their emotion regulation skills. This brought back the idea of the books that she wanted to publish when I was a child, and we officially teamed up in 2019 and decided to make it happen! The rest is history.

How does this book tie into your research interests?

I am really interested in consultation work and utilizing an ecological model to help support parents and teachers to improve student outcomes. I want to provide effective tools to those who work with students so that they can offer strong supports.

How does the book relate to your professional goals and general focus as a future school psychologist?

Similar to what I said earlier, my career goals are to equip those who interact with children with the necessary tools that promote positive outcomes. By writing these books I am fulfilling some of these personal goals. Additionally, I hope to use these books and tools in private practice and consultative work later in my career. I also recognize that I am only one person and there is a limited number of people that I will work with, but if I can equip those who I interact with, then there is an exponential curve of people who these books can reach to help support children.

The book has 6 sections- Sadness, Anger, Moodiness, Shyness, Worry, and Fearfulness- why did you pick those main sections to focus on?

We chose those emotions after reflecting on our interactions with our students and their caregivers. We found that those were some of the primary emotions that children, families, and teachers were wanting to address.

How long did it take you to write this?

Not very long at all! Big Emotions, Stepping Stones I wrote in 1 day, and Big Emotions, Seeds of Faith in 3 days.

How was collaborating with your mother?

My mom is one of my best friends! We share a lot of the same visions and have similar mindsets. We have the same desire to help caregivers and teachers, and it made working together really easy. In addition to my mom’s background in child development, she also has experience in business and marketing. This was great because she was able to incorporate this business knowledge to my knowledge of psychology and emotion regulation. We were able to use our backgrounds on to complement each other.

What was the process of writing, editing, and publish a book like?

It took a while! First, we wrote the manuscript, and you want to make your manuscript pristine before moving on to any next steps. After writing and completing the manuscript, we sent it to some close colleagues for review. That lead to a juncture point for us, specifically on if we wanted to submit it to a major publishing company, self-publish, or do a hybrid. We decided on self-publishing because we wanted to start our own business and have creative control over the book. After choosing to self-publish, we then navigated which publishing company we wanted to choose and ultimately picked one that had a far reach so we could get our book on Amazon, in Barnes and Noble, etc., while also being able to sell it on our website.

After that, we had to get an illustrator. We talked with a bunch of illustrators and discussed our vision and ultimately chose to work with Nadia, who is incredible. You go through a whole process with your illustrator of editing and refining ideas, similar to the process of editing of manuscript. Then, we submitted everything to the publisher, gave preferences for how we wanted it to look, and then it was mailed to us for distribution!

It is worth nothing that we were able to self-publish in part because of my mom's business background. I’m familiar with social media marketing and my mom is familiar with traditional marketing and knew how to navigate registering everything and adding it to the Library of Congress. We can from a privileged position to be able to do this, because not only is self-publishing cumbersome but it is also expensive to be able to pay for an illustrator and publish our books.

What has your experience been like reading this book to children?

I was able to sit and read with the son of one of the families that I did a photo shoot with for our social media platforms. The book was published in the middle of the pandemic, so it was rare to be able to even sit with him, and I am so grateful for this opportunity!

It was so cool to interact with him about the book, and to watch his parents read the book to him. Hearing him talk about the characters and know what was going on the story was so special.

It truly was really refreshing and reaffirming. Noticing that he and his parents were able to glean something from the book made me feel super accomplished. Even hearing him talk about his body, his feelings, how they manifest in his body, and what he can do now when he gets mad at his brothers was awesome!

Any other info about the book worth sharing?

Our whole goal of this book is to support caregivers, parents, and teachers by building up their skills in working with children. When we all come together, we can really support children in having a healthy development- the phrase “it takes a village” really holds true for us.

What is something you wish others knew about you?

I really want to speak to the idea that comparison is the thief of joy. I often get caught up in that and looking at the successes of my peers and colleagues, and I know that there is the potential for others to view me similarly. As excited as I am about this accomplishment, I also want to communicate the amount of hard work and roller coaster adventure it has been. When all we see are the fruits of someone’s labor, we can think that it was easy to do- the halo effect- and project that on to the individual. I am really proud of this book, but it was a huge learning experience, and I definitely did not do everything perfect or correct the first time!

Speaking of roller coasters, you mentioned there is another book in the series! Can you give me a sneak peek about that???

Yes! I would love to. The next book will also have two editions. It is called Big Hearts. There will be Big Hearts, Seeds of Faith and Big Hearts, Stepping Stones. The goal of Big Hearts was to take a more proactive lens to really building strong character in children. It looks at different characteristics like living joyfully, being generous, etc. Big Emotions can help reactively towards those bigger more adverse emotions, whereas Big Hearts will build towards positive protective characteristics for children. We are really excited about it- it will probably go to print in March! There may be a delay because of COVID-19 with what it looks like with printing, but it is ready to go!

To learn more about Kim’s books or purchase, please visit: www.smoothsailingbooks.com

If you are interested in being featured in the Behind the Books series to talk about identities you hold beyond “graduate student,” please email us at speak2peak@outlook.com.