OLLIE'S EATING by Chivaun Oldes

Chivaun Oldes is an author/illustrator of a lot of needed picture books for children, including My Anxiety Monster and My ADHD Monster. Her newest book, OLLIE’S EATING, is a child-friendly look at “tubies,” children who feed through feeding tubes.

Join Ollie as he teaches everyone about the different ways he eats. This book explores tube feeding in a fun, colorful way and helps to educate and offer honest child-friendly definitions. Great for tubies and anyone who loves them.

I love your illustrations! What is your drawing process like?

I’ve always been the sort of person who thought if I wanted to do something, I could just teach myself. Being an illustrator is one of those moments for me. Honestly I couldn’t afford to hire one for my first book, so I downloaded Procreate on my iPad for $10 and watched a lot of YouTube tutorials until I developed my own sort of style.

When I am illustrating any of my books, I am always trying to think of the best way to convey the information without words my younger readers who might not be able to understand the print yet. It’s great for mom or dad or older siblings to read to them, but I want them to get the story even if they are just staring at the pictures. Sometimes I spend days trying to brainstorm how you can convey a feeling in a simple illustration.

With Ollie’s Eating it was a little different. There are no monsters or hypotheticals in his story. The whole book is his real life journey with his G-tube and so a lot of the illustrations are my interpretations of real pictures of him that I already have or that his mom sent me. The NICU one in particular is a very close replication of one of his first photos and it gave me a lot of feelings to take that scary moment captured in a picture and bring it into an illustration. It’s important that the images are real and honest, even if they are simplified for children, because Ollie’s story is also real and honest and I didn’t want to hide the struggles he overcame.

I’m so glad other children get to learn about Ollie and his story! I also love that OLLIE’S EATING talks about children with feeding tubes (or tubies for short). What do you wish more people knew about tubie life?

So many things. One of my big goals with this book was to show how someone can be different and still be ‘the same’ as anyone else. Ollie is joyful, and mischievous, and sometimes, like all five year olds, a little monster. He’s just a normal kid who happens to have this one thing in his life which makes him a little bit different.

One thing I always think about is how innocent kids are with their questions. When Ollie was very small and would visit us, my oldest daughter would ask tons of questions about his G-tube. She would ask if it hurt him, or why he needed it, or why he couldn’t just drink a bottle like her little sister did. They were honest and curious, but not judgmental. Most children don’t have the inclination to exclude, they just want to understand. I hope that this book reaches them in their curiosity and answers some of those questions for them so that they will know and be able to tell others, “being a tubie isn’t weird or scary, it’s just a different way to eat.”

So true! And I definitely wish I’d had a lot of your books when I was a kid, especially MY ADHD MONSTER. What do you hope readers take away from your stories?

The thing I hope ALL of my books convey for kids is that there is nothing wrong with them. Growing up is hard enough without feeling like you’re the problem. So many of my darkest moments, even now as an adult, leave me with that taunting voice that just says, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you like this?” It’s such a negative way to view yourself and it breaks my heart to think of kids going through those same feelings. ADHD, Anxiety, and any number of mental health disorders can feel like an extra weight on your shoulders when you’re trying to get through life, but when you embrace those pieces of you, it all gets so much better. I want kids to know that it’s okay. The world might not have been built to accommodate their neurodivergence, but that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with them. I also hope it takes away some of that feelings I had as a kid, thinking I was the only person who felt the way I did. It was lonely and scary. Today I think we as a society are so much more open to discussing our mental health openly and honestly and I think that’s such an amazing thing, just knowing that you aren’t the only person going through it.

It definitely is! What are some of your current projects?

I have three projects cooking right now, because every time I finish a book I think, “Oh, I should write about this if I am going to have a book about that.” I plan to expand the monster universe with a Depression Monster book soon. I am also working on a companion idea to Ollie’s eating, focused on kids with hypoglycemia and diabetes.

My other big project has been rolling around for quite a while but I have been holding it in my ideas folder until I could give it the proper time. I am planning a chapter book series for early readers called Anxious Anna. Each book will explore the sort of topics that any normal kid might encounter AND work though how to manage the anxiety of that situation. I hope to have the first book, Anna and the Big Move, completed and in editing by the end of the year. At book trade shows, I often get parents who love my books but who have kids just a bit too old for Anxiety Monster and after a lot of thought and many requests, I decided to try my hand at filling that void.

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