What to do with your Whirly Swirly Thoughts by Jennie Allen Illustrated byNadia Gunawan

 

Front Cover - What to Do with Your Whirly, Swirly Thoughts

What to do with your Whirly Swirly Thoughts by Jennie Allen starts out with a letter to parents from the auhttps://readingwritingandpondering.blogspot.com/2025/05/what-to-do-with-your-whirly-swirly.htmlthor. In this letter she shares why she wrote the book and how she hopes it will be helpful. She also encourages people to recognize that sometimes people need more help than a book and it is okay to talk to a counselor. I like that she recognizes that and offers that advice to parents.

What to do with your Whirly Swirly Thoughts does have some colorful and cool illustrations. That is my favorite part of the book. I like that it offers some advice for helping to change thoughts BUT I feel that it invites the child to stuff down the bad stuff and not really deal with it. The verses that are used make it seem that we should only think good thoughts. And yet, David and other psalmists certainly dealt with some bigger thoughts. I think God gave us all emotions and so many times in church I feel like we get platitudes about why we we have to only think good thoughts. That is concerning to me. Sometimes we have something big and scary coming up like medical tests and it is okay to feel scared. I would have liked to have seen some of that type of information included in this book too. Otherwise, I think it sends the message that we are "bad" for having other types of thoughts and when/if we do have other types of thoughts, we must immediately get rid of them. 

One way the author lists to get rid of bad thoughts is to be thankful. I do think gratitude is important and needs to be part of our lives, but sometimes we need to process difficult emotions outside of gratitude. 

What to do with your Whirly Swirly Thoughts is a Christian book and there are Bible verses in the book.

I received a copy of this book from Tommy Nelson. All opinions within this review are my own.

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