If you’ve read any of my other Substack posts, or if you follow me on Twitter, “children’s author” is probably not the first label you’d think to apply to me, and rightfully so. Whether comedic, dramatic, or philosophical, I’d much rather write for an adult audience. However, some years ago, upon considering if there was any kind of story missing from the children’s genre that could help them deal with an inevitable hardship, I found myself inspired. What if there was a children’s book that helped prepare kids for the pain of their first breakup? I thought. What if there was a story they could absorb when they were young that had valuable lessons they could carry with them through all of life?
That was the birth of Boy Girl Monster, and that very book is what I’d like to discuss today.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The story of Boy Girl Monster mostly revolves around a wannabe hero, Boy, and his pet guinea pig, GP. At the beginning of the book, a strange creature—Monster—moves into Boy’s neighborhood and quickly becomes good pals with Boy’s best friend, a female character named, you guessed it, Girl. Soon after, Boy sees Monster kidnap Girl and drag her into the woods. Boy becomes angry and worried. He immediately goes to rescue Girl but is stopped by GP. GP tells him that he is not ready to rescue Girl and puts Boy through a series of “training” activities to make him a better person who is more capable of dealing with the situation.
The scenario Boy finds himself in—determined to rescue his best friend from a perceived threat—is a metaphor for jealousy, a feeling many of us deal with while in a relationship. Monster is not actually a monster, but another boy, and Girl hasn’t really been kidnapped. She is willfully spending time with another fella. It is Boy’s jealousy that causes him to perceive the situation in such a distorted way. While Boy, along with the reader, is convinced Girl is in trouble, GP is of course aware of what’s really going on and spends the entirety of the book trying to help Boy “grow up,” so to speak, so he can win Girl back while avoid getting himself in a tussle.
If anyone’s ever been through a breakup, he or she knows that the jealousy and sadness that come with the loss of a partner are some of the hardest emotions to sort through in life. They can lead to a kind of crippling anger and dejection that’s hard to get under control. My goal with Boy Girl Monster was to deliver a tale people could look back to for advice when dealing with such a devastating occurrence. If we can teach our young ones about jealousy before it smacks them in the face, we can help them avoid succumbing to the feeling and going down a regrettable path that arises from a lack of understanding and control.
But the lessons in Boy Girl Monster are there to help with almost any aspect of life, not just handling the end of a relationship. For example, there’s a page on eating healthy and exercising, a page on philosophy and study, a page on picking yourself back up after failing, and so on. I compiled a list of what I thought were some of the most important lessons to focus on for anyone looking to develop in a healthy way, physically or mentally, and dedicated a page to each.
On the rare instance I dig out a copy of Boy Girl Monster and read through it, it makes me smile. I’m proud of the way it turned out. I think I succeeded in telling the story I was aiming to tell and getting across the lessons and feelings I was aiming to convey. And I had a great artist that added plenty of his own touches along the way. Thank you, Ryan!
If you’d like to pick up a copy of BGM, the cheapest version is a digital PDF directly from my website, which can be found here. Otherwise, you can also pick up a digital version from Amazon. (Both my website and Amazon have previews of the story if you’d like to read a couple pages.) Or you can order yourself a fancy physical copy from Barnes & Noble.
Well, that’ll do it for today. Thanks for reading!
And stay safe out there.