POPCORN

POPCORN by Rob Harrell

Rob Harrell, author of Wink (a moving story about a boy dealing with eye cancer that parallels his own experiences - see review by putting Wink in the search bar) is back with a new book, POPCORN.

POPCORN is a story about Andrew Yaeger who deals with intense anxiety. Why POPCORN? Andrew uses a kernel of popcorn along a sliding scale to indicate his level of anxiety. To the left, the popcorn remains in kernel form, chilling. The farther right the kernel slides, the closer it comes to exploding as the oil heats up. Honestly, it's really a clever symbol to indicate what's happening internally. Harrell shares in his notes at the end of the book, that he was a kid that dealt with anxiety. It is clear he is pouring experience into Andrew.

I don't like to put words in authors' mouths, but I'm going to step out on a bit of a limb here and say this book was written with two purposes in mind. The first is to come alongside kids that experience panic attacks and let them know that they are not alone. The second is to help kids who don't experience anxiety to understand what is happening inside their friends and classmates who do deal with these very scary, intense feelings.

I've got to be honest about something here, though. This book makes me sad. Andrew is a kid with a lot of weight on his young shoulders. His parents are divorced. Dad's not around. Mom's struggling to keep bills paid. Grandma, who has dementia, lives with them. He is picked on at school because of his clothes- his shoes are grass stained due to mowing lawns to make some extra money. The list goes on. While there are other reasons why panic/anxiety show up in our young people today, the stress that so many kids are carrying is more than they can handle, and this book shows us a prime example of that. More than once, I found myself desiring to reach through the pages and lift the burdens off this young man's back. I guess that's the mom coming out in me!

HEADS UP- There is a swear word used one time - a**.