Oswald Messweather - Dimity Powel & Siobhan McVey QUEENSLAND AUTHOR
Don’t let your ice cream melt while you’re counting somebody else’s sprinkles.
Now, it’s a well-known fact I LOVE ice cream, barely noticing incidental toppings in my eagerness to tuck into its creamy, silken wonderfulness. However this is a sentiment (and well-known meme) I can relate to, at least in part. While many of us, young and old, develop repetitive habits that can be interpreted as obsessive, it is when unwanted reoccurring thoughts, fears and sensations (obsessions) dominate actions and compel repetitive behaviours (compulsions) that the illness, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) becomes apparent. It’s this obsessive desire to reduce or alleviate the fear of a consequence occurring that many can relate to, myself included. Fear can spark many things…even story lines….
Sometimes picture book ideas spring up out of nowhere. I can’t recall exactly where Oswald’s story came from or why the urge to tell it hammered at me so strongly , but once he slipped into my life, he was determined to stay and be heard. Oswald Constantine Dorian Messweather’s tale first bubbled to life during a flight from Brisbane to Singapore. In just under eight hours, Ozzie as he affectionately became known to me, invited me into his precise and anxious world. I knew I had to treat him gently yet couldn’t wait to share his tale of overcoming, or rather managing, OCD with the world. This is his story.
Mess and disorder upset Oswald. Even the complexity of his own name is enough to set Oswald’s legs jiggling and his palms itching with anxiety. To combat his unease, Oswald obsessively counts his take-everywhere pocket pals – his crayons. It is a compulsion he finds comforting but also extremely exhausting.
Oswald’s obsessive preoccupations distract him from everything and everyone else around him, until one day Oswald is encouraged to use his penchant for perfection and eye for detail in a class project. With the help of his crayons, Oswald’s classmates create something spectacular, which helps Oswald realise just how valuable he is in spite of his anxieties.
Oswald is not a picture book that focuses intently on the educational perspectives of children with OCD but rather more on the emotional aspects associated with this debilitating condition. Oswald is caught in the grips of needing to be in control of the messier aspects of his life and like many young children suffering from obsessive worrying and anxieties, wants to stop but can’t. By allowing Oswald to take control of his anxieties and employ them with purpose, Oswald gains room to breathe and an awareness that they need not govern him.
Siobhan McVey evocative stylised illustrations help reinforce as well as soften the prose which is occasionally metaphoric and curt. Ribbons and swirls of colour speak for Oswald, depicting the intensity of his emotions through their form and complexity and deliver a sense of hope and enlightenment.
Unhealthy reoccurring anxious thoughts can inhibit daily functioning in the most corrosive ways. Nearly 3 per cent of Australians experience OCD with children as young as six displaying symptoms. Causes and triggers are many and varied however, this picture book endeavours to create a timely and gentle medium, which parents and carers can share with young children to encourage deeper discussion and promote emotional and mental healing in a non-instructive way.
Published: 28 March 2021
Illustrator: Siobhan McVey
Format: 32pp Paperback
Ideal for: 4 – 8 year olds and sufferers of OCD
