Fear Stories
One of my favorite stories about fear is Very Worried Walrus (out of the Sweet Pickles series). He is afraid of riding his bike because of all the horrible things he imagines will happen to him--he will crash. Then after that it gets even worse-and more hilarious. He must be carried to the hospital and the ambulance gets caught in traffic and then the heliocopter runs into trouble and on and one and one. He finaly gets the nerve to ride and does crash. But nothing else bad happens and he learns to ride his bike. It is funny and very motivating at the same time.
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I've used Big Al by Andrew Clements. Similar to Swimmy, but it is the other fish that fear Al until he "saves" them.
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Swimmy
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For a rather different take on fear, there is the goblin story in
Little Bear's Visit by Else Minarik. It's kind of a riff on FDR's
"fear itself"
speech. The goblin hears something while walking in a place that
feels spooky to him. He is so scared he jumps out of his shoes,
runs away, and hides in a tree. He can hear footsteps approaching
him pit-pat pit-pat.
He is terrified -- but then when the footsteps stop close to him,
he becomes curious too. He wrestles with whether to look out or not.
Curiosity wins. He looks. And what he sees are his little red shoes!
He
embraces his shoes and then puts them back on.
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I love this story because it speaks to children's experience of
their fears. So powerful and pervasive. But somehow possibly
overcome by the power of curiosity and affection.
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There's also this recognition that sometimes what you are afraid of
is a part of you that isn't actually that scary when you just look
at it.
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I read this story to my daughter about a million times when she was
little. (probably why I can write a synopsis so easily). She LOVED
it.
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Great story about fear is Gershon's Mistake and great story for Rosh Hashanah.
We did Dr. Seuss's "What was I afraid of?" for summer camp... It is more about fearing the unknown and that others we fear may be as afraid of us as we are of them.? (It features a pair of animated pants with no one in them and a little boy that sees them dancing around and gets scared until they both get tangled in thorns and discover they are not so scary.? We actually had a middle schooler dress up as the pants - used some giant adult jean overalls, folded it over top of him so that he was literally walking pants... recommend revealing the actor at the end of the story if you have young kids in the audience.? We had a couple that were actually afraid of the pants and so it made a good conversation 1st to see that it was not real and 2nd to realize that they were safe after all after being afraid and 3rd they can see why being with others helps being less afraid. ?Also it can be difficult for the pants to see so practice at least once through to remove obstacles.? The kids loved it though!)?
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