Cry Hard, Chucky

Andrew Kelly

Emma Stuart

Little Steps, 2024

32pp., hbk., RRP $A26.95

9781922833419

Chucky is a great little kid. He is good mannered, fun loving and into everything. But when he makes a mistake, or things don’t go his way, he tends to get angry and upset. With Dad’s help, Chucky learns the healing powers of having a good cry.

In times gone by there was a saying that “boys don’t cry” as though it was somehow “unmanly” for males to show and share their emotions, and as that slowly dissolved into the past, there came a new acronym of SNAG – sensitive, new age guy – as though, again, for a male to be showing and sharing emotions was so unusual it needed a label.  And sadly, in some families these sorts of beliefs still hold true and boys learn to repress their anger and their sadness, regret, hurt and all those other emotions until they explode, sometimes with disastrous consequences. 

So this is a story that has a place in helping our young understand that emotions are normal, that expressing them appropriately is essential and often cathartic, and it is, indeed, okay for boys to cry.  In fact it is natural and a necessity. Chucky encounters a number of situations that will be familiar to young readers and his dad encourages him to “cry hard” validating both the situation and Chucky’s response to it. Tears can make others feel uncomfortable and many feel a need to apologise if they fell themselves welling up, but stories like these that normalise such emotions go a long way to addressing them.