Where feelings come to life.
A story-driven collection that turns emotions into characters children can recognize in themselves. Not instruction. Not a lesson. A mirror that helps big feelings make sense.
Every book in this collection is already written. They are now moving through the longest part of any picture book’s journey: illustration, design, formatting, and production. Joining the waitlist guarantees you the launch announcement, the bundle preorder option, and the free starter resource the day each book is ready.
As children connect with the characters, they begin to recognize those same patterns in their own experiences ~ giving them a way to pause, reflect, and respond with clarity.
Children who can name 5+ emotions by age 5 score 35% higher on social readiness, lifelong empathy, and friendship depth.
So many children grow up being told their feelings are too much, too loud, or simply wrong. “You’re fine.” “Stop crying.” “Don’t be dramatic.” Emotibles was built for a different truth ~ that every feeling a child has is real, worthy of a name, and deserving of a voice. Emotions are not something to manage out of sight. They are part of who a child is becoming.
Children begin to recognize that their feelings are valid and worth listening to ~ not something to hide, minimize, or apologize for.
Parents and caregivers gain a way to respond instead of react ~ replacing “you’re fine” with “I see you ~ tell me which Emotible is showing up right now.”
Families and classrooms grow into spaces where every feeling is welcomed, named, and expressed ~ teaching children that knowing your emotions is strength, not weakness.
The developing brain uses up to 60% of a child’s total energy in the first two years of life. Nutrition during this window measurably shapes neural growth, attention, and lifelong learning capacity.
Emotional literacy is not a “soft skill.” Decades of developmental research show it is the operating system underneath every other skill a child will learn.
Children with strong emotion vocabularies show measurable advantages in reading comprehension, friendship depth, leadership, and stress recovery for the rest of their lives. Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence has tracked these outcomes for over 30 years.
The window matters: by age 8, the brain’s emotional regulation hub is roughly 80% wired for life. The wiring happens through repetition. Through story. Through a child meeting their feelings on a page in the safety of a parent’s lap, before they have to meet them at school.
Emotional regulation in early childhood is a stronger predictor of academic success than IQ, family income, and reading readiness combined. This is the work that begins, quietly, in a story.
In 1975, pediatrician Dr. Edward Tronick filmed mothers playing happily with their babies, then asked the mothers to stop responding ~ to hold a “still face” for two minutes. What happens next has been viewed millions of times and is required watching in every developmental psychology program in the world.
A baby cycles through joy, confusion, distress, and meltdown in under sixty seconds. Even pre-verbal infants are reading every micro-expression on the adult faces around them. Their nervous systems are wired by ours.
“Even tiny moments of disconnection have meaning to a baby.”
Dr. Edward Tronick · Harvard Medical School
Kids with rich feeling-words have 50% fewer behavioral incidents. Naming a feeling tames it. Stories teach the names.
A child cannot learn to regulate alone. They co-regulate with the adults around them. Here is how each adult role can show up as the kind of attuned face a child remembers.
You do not have to be perfect. You have to be REPAIRABLE.
Children spend 30+ hours a week with you. Your face is part of their early wiring.
You are often the first co-regulator a baby ever experiences outside the womb.
The Still Face is now a foundational framework in attachment therapy, dyadic work, and trauma treatment.
When a parent reads an Emotibles book to a child, they look at the page together. They name a feeling. They watch the character’s face change. They feel their own face change in response.
Every read-aloud is, structurally, the OPPOSITE of the Still Face Experiment. It is a parent and a child, attuned, sharing a moment that names the inner world of one of them out loud, in the safety of the other’s gaze.
The book does the naming. The grown-up does the attuning. The child does the learning ~ silently, somatically, durably ~ that their feelings are safe to feel out loud.
Stories that name feelings teach faces how to stay.
Just 15 minutes of read-aloud per day before kindergarten correlates with a 1.5 grade-level reading advantage by 3rd grade. The compound interest is staggering.
Each book brings one emotion to life as a creature with its own name, shape, voice, and way of showing up. Children meet the Fizzlesnaps when excitement bubbles over, the Wigglewhoms of Maybe Mountain when doubt creeps in, and the Puffwhisps when relief finally arrives.
Some creatures are bridges ~ the in-between feelings that help children move from stuck toward steady. Naming them is the first gentle step toward feeling in the right direction.
Children with strong emotional vocabulary by age 5 form deeper friendships, recover faster from setbacks, and lead with empathy as adults. Story is how the vocabulary gets built.
The Science Behind the Stories
Each emotion becomes a creature with a name, a face, and a way of showing up. Fizzlesnap. Wigglewhom. Puffwhisp. These are not mascots ~ they are entry points into real emotional literacy.
Stories show the creature doing their real work inside a child’s heart ~ greeting a big feeling, sitting with it, and showing how it moves. Children see the invisible made visible.
“When the feeling shows up in real life, children finally have language for it. They can say “that was my Wigglewhom,” or “I feel Puffwhisp right now,” and suddenly a nameless swirl becomes something they can hold.
Additional materials designed to support and deepen understanding beyond the story.
Every book in the series comes with companion resources designed to deepen understanding and spark conversation.
Hands-on activities that reinforce learning through drawing, writing, and creative play.— one per book.
Thoughtful prompts that help children connect each story to their own experiences and emotions.
Conversation starters and context for adults to guide children through each story's themes.
Character cards, Quotes, & Coloring Sheets that help the lesson land and last. hese are included in the Paid for Activityy Packs.
As children become familiar with the characters, they begin to recognize those same processes in themselves. A strong reaction becomes something they can name. A pause becomes something they can choose.
— what once felt overwhelming begins to feel understandable.
“When a child begins to understand their emotions, they begin to respond more and react less.”
~ MAISEL MCLAULA
This collection was built for the adults in a child’s life ~ the ones who read aloud at bedtime, who notice the meltdown before it peaks, who want a better way to talk about what’s happening inside. Each story is grounded in developmental psychology, shaped by imagination and warmth, and told with the belief that every child deserves to understand their own feelings.
Whether you are the parent who sits on the floor with a sobbing toddler, the teacher who makes space for big tears in a small body, the counselor who says “tell me more” when a child has run out of words, or the foster carer learning what attachment really means ~ thank you. You are why feelings get to feel safe.
The single biggest predictor of a child’s emotional resilience is having one adult who consistently meets their feelings without trying to fix them. That is not a low bar. It is sacred work.
Every story you read out loud is a quiet lesson in this: feelings are allowed, feelings can be named, feelings pass. You are teaching a child that their inner world is welcome here.
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“Children deserve stories that meet them where they are, not stories that talk past them.”
Mirror neurons fire in a child’s brain whenever they watch a parent read. They are not just hearing the story ~ they are practicing being a reader, internally.
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The brain, brought to life as a cast of characters. Every behavior finally has a name, a face, and a reason for showing up.
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