There is a pile of books stacked on a tiny children’s chair at Rachel Robson’s feet. A multicoloured tower of bright yellow, purple, blue. With monsters, and little girls, and uncomfortable emojis. And all of them feature – in some way – anxiety.
In the next aisle over in the Gleebooks store in Sydney’s Glebe, where Robson works as a children’s book specialist, there is a shelf packed tight with picture books. It used to be filled with books about using the potty and different families – but now it is dominated by books about feelings, emotional literacy and “a lot of anxiety”.
