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Jenny Hornby, a licensed professional counselor in Western Branch, recently added storytelling to her therapeutic techniques. Along with art and play therapy, Hornby uses her soon-to-be-released children’s book to help young kids and their families work through “big feelings.”

Hornby wrote “Made For This” during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to keep herself busy, and it officially launches on June 17. 

The book explores the feeling of fear from the perspective of Ozzie, a young otter who must learn to swim and sleep on his back by his first birthday. Ozzie eventually conquers his fears with the help of calm and reassuring Mama otter, and Chip, a courageous dragonfly.

Driven mainly by her love of working with children, Hornby also pulled aspects of her own life as inspiration for the book.

She recounted a time when she visited Discovery Cove in Florida with one of her sons. He was about four years old, and was scared to go into the water because of a large stingray swimming nearby. 

“He was on my back, and we made up this song, and we would sing the song, and he could handle it,” Hornby said. “So that kind of sparked my interest in terms of, like, what happens in the story.”

Hornby added she chose otters to be the main characters because of their playful and patient parenting style.

“I liked using an otter for that reason, because I think when we work with kids, it’s important to be playful and not be too serious about things,” she said. 

Another way Hornby incorporated an aspect of playfulness into the book was by making it rhyme. Jami Simon, Hornby’s best friend, helped come up with the rhyme scheme one afternoon in her backyard.

Simon said the rhymes “flowed” out of them, and she thinks it will make it “more fun for the kiddos to read.”

She added it’s been amazing to see Hornby’s ideas come to life, and she thinks the book is perfect to help young kids learn about complicated feelings and how to deal with them.

Simon said she wished she had the book 15 years ago when her own kids were younger.

While the book hasn’t hit shelves yet, Hornby has provided it as a resource for teachers and other counselors. She also uses it with her own clients and has discovered that kids enjoy this new narrative therapy, and start exploring their own story-telling abilities.

The book can be a tool for parents too, Hornby said. She mentioned that Mama otter is a co-regulated parent, meaning she’s able to stay calm while her child is panicking, which is an important skill for parents to learn. 

Mama otter is also vulnerable with Ozzie, sharing times when she felt scared and how she overcame it. Hornby said learning to be vulnerable with kids is another takeaway parents can get from the book.

“When parents come back after reading it, they’re like, ‘I read it to my kid, but it really helped me,’” she said. “I hope it’s a story families read together.”

As a mother, Simon said the book was “100%” relatable, and she resonated with Mama otter. 

“Lovely mama in the book says ‘I see you, I’ve got you,’ and I think that’s how all of us moms feel,” she said. “We look at our kids and we really see them, and we see when they’re struggling, and we also want them to understand that we do have their backs.”

Hornby said writing the book helped her work through a lot of her own fears of failure and rejection, especially because writing a children’s book was never something she planned to do.

“It’s built my confidence, I would say, but … the cost of admission has been stepping out of my comfort zone,” she said. “I would say [it’s] vulnerable for sure, you know, sharing a story [from] inside that’s going to be out there, but it’s been really fun.” 

Hornby’s husband, Ben, has also been involved in the behind-the-scenes aspects of the book. He acts as Hornby’s manager, publicist, editor, social media marketer, and overall cheerleader.

Between both of them working full time jobs and raising two sons, Ben said the process has been overwhelming at times, but very rewarding. They’ve always been close in their marriage, Ben said, but working on the book together has brought them even closer.

“She had been praying that God would, kind of, help give the two of us something to do together,” Ben said. “We didn’t really see a whole lot of each other until the evenings … So this book thing came up, and it’s just been the combination of both of our superpowers, you know, her creativity, her heart for kids, but also weaves that into my technical stuff … And so that has been truly a fun time.”

In addition to the book, Hornby has a website with other resources kids and parents can use to help work through difficult emotions. There are coloring sheets inspired by the book, as well as educational videos Hornby and her husband film using puppets to tackle other complex topics.

Hornby plans to make a series of books featuring different emotions. After fear there will be anger, sadness, and joy. The final book will include characters from all the previous books and will reinforce lessons learned previously.

Throughout the whole process, Hornby said she’s questioned if her books will make a difference.

“I’ll ask myself, and other children’s authors have told me they feel the same way, like, is this really going to help? Is this really going to make a difference? And then all of a sudden, you have somebody come up to you and say, ‘I read it, and oh my gosh, my kid read it, like, four times.’ And so then I’m like, okay, good, you know? And I guess that’s the thing, if all of us put something out there that’s good, if everybody does that, it makes the world a better place.”