Do you suffer from Coulrophobia? If you do, then you are not alone. The fear of clowns is listed as one of the top ten fears among people. If you suffer from high levels of anxiety and panic attacks when you are at the circus, then you might be Coulrophobic.
I bet you are asking yourself what on earth is a Nomophobia? I am laughing myself because I didn’t know what it was, and I consider myself to have an expanded vocabulary. If you can’t live without your cell phone, and you panic the minute you have only bar left then you are a Nomophobic. And what about a vidigameaphobia? A vidigameaphobia fears video games. If you fear logging on to the Internet, then you have Inter phobia. Do you fear anything to the right of your body? Are you constantly looking to the right of your shoulder? Then you have Dextrophobia. If you fear anything to the left of your body, then you are a Levaphobic. Are you familiar with the word Alektorophobia? If you fear live chickens, then you might be an Alektorophobic.
Are you a sequilpedalophobic? A sequilpedalophobic is one who fears long words. As you can see, I am learning about the different types of phobias. Although I do remember a few such as xenophobia, which is the fear of foreigners and agoraphobia, which is the fear of being in a situation that might provoke anxiety or panic disorder. For example, these sufferers will avoid being inside an elevator by themselves or other situations that might trigger this fear. And last but not least, is the fear of puppets or pupa phobia. If as a child you were scared of Oscar the Grouch or Cookie Monster, then you probably were a pupa phobic.
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Do you suffer from Coulrophobia? If you do, then you are not alone. The fear of clowns is listed as one of the top ten fears among people. If you suffer from high levels of anxiety and panic attacks when you are at the circus, then you might be Coulrophobic.
I bet you are asking yourself what on earth is a Nomophobia? I am laughing myself because I didn’t know what it was, and I consider myself to have an expanded vocabulary. If you can’t live without your cell phone, and you panic the minute you have only bar left then you are a Nomophobic. And what about a vidigameaphobia? A vidigameaphobia fears video games. If you fear logging on to the Internet, then you have Inter phobia. Do you fear anything to the right of your body? Are you constantly looking to the right of your shoulder? Then you have Dextrophobia. If you fear anything to the left of your body, then you are a Levaphobic. Are you familiar with the word Alektorophobia? If you fear live chickens, then you might be an Alektorophobic.
Are you a sequilpedalophobic? A sequilpedalophobic is one who fears long words. As you can see, I am learning about the different types of phobias. Although I do remember a few such as xenophobia, which is the fear of foreigners and agoraphobia, which is the fear of being in a situation that might provoke anxiety or panic disorder. For example, these sufferers will avoid being inside an elevator by themselves or other situations that might trigger this fear. And last but not least, is the fear of puppets or pupa phobia. If as a child you were scared of Oscar the Grouch or Cookie Monster, then you probably were a pupa phobic.
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
…that’s a fear of solitude or “I don’t like being alone, or in the dark”, as Little Mouse puts it in Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears by Emily Gravett, which has just been awarded the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. While bedtime itself can be such a cosy, reassuring end to the day, with a story and a cuddle, there often comes a time when children don’t want to be left alone in the dark. Logical reassurances go unheeded and sometimes the turning-out ritual takes on the stuff of the very stories they’ve been laughing at, as monsters are chased from under beds and spooks are ousted from wardrobes… This is where Little Mouse comes in.
The book’s template is a self-help book for people to log their own fears: and each pair of phobias on a double page is cleverly interlinked.
“Each page in this book provides a large blank space
for you to record and face your fear using a combination of:
Drawing
Writing
Collage.
REMEMBER!
A FEAR FACED IS A FEAR DEFEATED.”
Only, what we have here is Mouse’s personally completed copy – and what a timorous wee beastie he is! He has filled in every page, from Entomophobia, a fear of insects, through monsters, yes, to, well, everything (that’s Panophobia!). In fact, Mouse has chewed it and glued it; and with all he goes through, it’s amazing that both he and his pencil survive until the end.
There is genius behind this book – every time I look at it I am struck by the lightness of touch Gravett has brought to this tricky subject. There is so much humor (not least in the way it ends) and this provides a very real opening for children to talk openly about their fears, however irrational – and, in fact, not just their own: my Arachnophobia (though I’m loathe to acknowledge it by its proper name) was pounced upon gleefully by my two…
The artwork is stunning, right down to the tiniest detail of a dog-eared page corner. As well as the holes and torn edges, there are collages with flaps, some terrifying feathers and an annotated “Visitors’ Map of the Isle of Fright”. This is a book to be drooled over - though perhaps not literally. Button and Mr Moo, the rats to whom the book is dedicated, have already done their business… In fact, some of the illustrative techiniques involved seem set to cause a furore – but that mustn’t be allowed to detract from the quality of the book itself. I go along with The Ultimate Book Guide’s comments about the publishers too – Macmillan are indeed to be congratulated; and I can only envy Daniel is preview peek at Gravett’s soon-to-be-published The Odd Egg!
Here’s a link to yesterday’s interview with Emily in The Guardian and do look at her own website, including this activity to “Make Your Own Collage of Fears”. She was also recently selected as one of The Big Picture campaign’s ten Best New Illustrators in the UK, as announced at the Bologna Book Fair. You can read The Big Picture’s interview with her here.
And a little PS – we will be featuring three of The Big Picture’s longlisted artists in our Gallery in our next PaperTigers update…
