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by Diane Jodouin (Author)
Smish starts every morning with a giant BOING. Hello sun. Hello friends. Their whole heart, wide open.
But today, getting out of bed feels hard. A heavy cloud has come to stay - and it arrived for no reason at all. Everything feels heavy. Everything feels far away. Even Smish feels far away.
When elder snail Olo finds them, he doesn't ask questions. He doesn't try to fix it or rush them back to BOING. He just stays. Beside them in the quiet, in the weight of an ordinary afternoon.
And slowly - not all at once - something shifts. Not because the cloud lifts, but because Smish is not alone inside it. An antenna reaches out, just the tip, and gently brushes the moss. Cool. Cushy. Real. The cloud is still there. But so is Olo. And Smish's heart feels just a little less heavy. For now, this is enough.
Smish and the Day the Cloud Stayed is a tender, honest picture book for children ages 4-7 that puts language to emotional heaviness without explaining it away. It honours the reality that hard days sometimes arrive without reason - and that the most healing presence isn't the one that fixes, but the one that stays.
Includes A Parent's Guide to Smish - a warm, grounded companion for caregivers and educators. It offers guidance on sitting with a child's discomfort without rushing to fix it, using the senses to offer safety when words fall short, and why feelings that are simply named - without being pushed past - have room to soften. For families where the heaviness lingers or keeps returning, the guide also points gently toward professional support.
