Faith-Based Books for Big Feelings

Big feelings aren't mistakes — they're clues.

Every feeling has a helpful job to do — and gentle, faith-filled stories help children ages 4–9 notice, name, and choose what to do with theirs, one feeling at a time.

Meet Book One

The Sleuth Method

How the Feelings Sleuths work

Children feel things long before they can name them. A four-year-old who says "I don't want to" may mean nervous, or left out, or tired of being the smallest person in the room. Without the words, it comes out as a slammed door.

"We notice. We name. We prayerfully choose."

1

We Notice

Every big feeling starts in the body. Kids learn to spot the clues — a racing heart, wobbly "spaghetti" legs, a rock in the tummy.

2

We Name

Feelings aren't mistakes — they're messages. Using the clues and the Feelings Map, children name the feeling.

3

We Prayerfully Choose

With the feeling named, children ask God what to do about it — and choose the next step in a way that pleases Him.

The Series

Where the Feelings Sleuths begin

Book One of The Feelings Sleuths — the story that started it all, and the one that teaches a child how to be a sleuth.

Cover of I Feel a Rock in My Tummy by Cynthia Spellman, MD
Book One Guilt, Saying Sorry & Making Things Right

I Feel a Rock in My Tummy

A Faith-Based Story About Guilt, Saying Sorry, and Making Things Right

When Dad's drone catches Grandpa doing a chicken dance in the snow, Josh laughs so hard that a hurtful joke slips out — and he can't take it back. Soon a heavy rock settles in his tummy. It isn't the kind a doctor can find, but Josh knows it's there.

"If I did something bad, does that mean I'm bad?"

Has your child ever said or done something hurtful, then wanted to hide? Josh knows that struggle. Ignoring the rock doesn't make it disappear — it only seems to grow heavier.

This is a book for every child who has wondered that question, and every grown-up who wants to answer with reassurance, truth, and a practical way forward. Warm, funny, and faith-based: a story about the feeling nobody likes, the good work God gave it to do, and the gentle truth that children are loved while they learn.

Ages 4–9 · Written & illustrated by Cynthia Spellman, MD

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The Origin Story

Why the rock came first

Every series starts somewhere. The Feelings Sleuths started here, with a rock in a boy's tummy — and not by accident.

Guilt is the feeling that teaches the whole method. It's loud in the body, so a child can actually find it. It's stubborn enough that ignoring it doesn't work — Josh tries, and the rock only gets heavier. And it points somewhere: guilt isn't God telling a child he's bad, it's a nudge that something needs mending. That distinction is the hinge the entire series turns on. A child who learns to read one uncomfortable feeling correctly has learned what every book after this one will ask of them: feelings aren't misbehavior to be scolded away, they're clues worth following.

So this is the book where a child becomes a sleuth for the first time. Josh notices the rock. He names it. And then, with God's help, he prayerfully chooses what to do about it — the sorry, and the making-it-right that comes after the sorry. Notice, Name, Choose is never explained to him. He lives it, one clue at a time, and the reader learns it right alongside him.

That's why every Feelings Sleuths book that follows can begin already in motion. The rock did the teaching. The next feeling only has to be noticed.

"We notice. We name. We prayerfully choose."

More feelings are on the way — each one a new clue, and a new story.

For Grown-Ups

How families use them

The book does the introducing, so you don't have to start the conversation cold.

Read it before you need it

The story lands best when nobody's in trouble. Read it on an ordinary night, and the words are already there for the hard afternoon later.

Read it together

The story gives you an opening. Nobody has to be put on the spot, and the child gets to meet the feeling from a safe distance first.

Use the words later

This is the part that lasts. When the rock turns up at the dinner table, you both already have a name for it — and a next step.

Cynthia Spellman, MD

About the Author

Cynthia Spellman, MD

Adult psychiatrist & author–illustrator

I'm a psychiatrist. I spend my days with adults who are learning, at thirty-five or sixty, to notice what they're feeling and say it out loud.

It's good work. It's also slower than it needed to be. Again and again I've thought: this would have been easier at six.

So I started writing the books I wished my patients had been read as children. They're short, they're for reading at bedtime, and they don't try to fix anything. They just give a child words — and give the grown-up next to them somewhere to start.

— Cynthia Spellman, MD, practicing in New York and New Jersey