What's Scarier Than Thunder?

March has come, and bookstores are officially stocked with my latest illustrative picture book endeavor, What’s Scarier Than Thunder? Written by talented writer/director/actor Ben Falcone, it’s a book aimed at helping kids with their fears, a book I was well-suited to work on, because generally speaking, I’m very much a chicken. But in the adult way, mind you—I’m scared of grown-up things, like screwing up my taxes or running out of clean wooden tubs.

But kid fears are a whole different animal. You leave those unaddressed, and phobias start to fester, and your kids start acting really weird. So this was a really gratifying book to work on. Ben has this wonderful take on how to help kids get past their fears, without any of the harsh solutions that were prevalent in my era. Gone are the days, thank god, of helping your children overcome their fear of heights by apprenticing them to a family of tightrope walkers. Especially nowadays, when there’s no money in it. And everyone and their mother has their own footbridge, or… skyway, or… funicular.

SEVEN! Seven YEARS of sleeping under a caravan, squishing into hand-me-down aerial boots and sweat-stained leotards. Did you know that a lion can laugh? Not laugh like we laugh, but a person can train them to make a specific gutteral haw that sounds mocking enough when you’re trying to—

*deep cleansing breath*

Calm blue ocean.

*deep cleansing breath*

Calm blue ocean.

Anywhooo, if you have kids who are scared of thunder—scared of anything, really—consider getting them this book and adopting Ben’s trick, which solves the problem using good ol’ fashioned, natural, homeopathic laughter. No nasty net rash… no donkey bites… no scurvy from an all-funnel cake diet.

I do actually miss this one thing. We used to call it “Bird in a Blanket”. That’s a turkey leg, wrapped in cotton candy.

Here’s the rest of the pictures I was gonna show:

*Kitchen hums with the whir of a cotton candy spinner. Yellow legal notepad sits on the side table with several notes. !!!!IMPORTANT!!!! Remember to tell people where they can get the book!!! is heavily circled.*