July 2, 2025
Monsters with a Mission: How Sarah Sparks Is Helping Kids Tame Big Emotions
Send us a text What happens when a devastating brain injury leads to an unexpected creative breakthrough? For Sarah Sparks, it meant birthing the "Monsters on Mill Street" series – vibrant, heartfelt stories that are transforming how children handle big emotions and life's challenges. Sarah's journey began with a Thanksgiving fall that resulted in a traumatic brain injury, leaving her unable to perform everyday tasks. During recovery, these monster characters emerged as her "life raft," help...
What happens when a devastating brain injury leads to an unexpected creative breakthrough? For Sarah Sparks, it meant birthing the "Monsters on Mill Street" series – vibrant, heartfelt stories that are transforming how children handle big emotions and life's challenges.
Sarah's journey began with a Thanksgiving fall that resulted in a traumatic brain injury, leaving her unable to perform everyday tasks. During recovery, these monster characters emerged as her "life raft," helping her process family challenges while healing. Today, these stories have become powerful tools helping children navigate everything from explosive anger and ADHD to social anxiety and resilience.
The genius of Sarah's approach lies in how her monsters connect with children on their level. Rather than telling kids what to feel or how to behave, each character faces relatable challenges while discovering practical solutions. Albie in "The Angriest Monster" teaches grounding techniques using the five senses. Max shows how satisfying organization can be. Becks helps high-energy kids recognize appropriate times and places for movement. Sky tackles the painful reality of "masking" to fit in, while Drake demonstrates finding joy in small moments during overwhelming times.
Parents and educators share remarkable success stories – like the little girl going through her parents' divorce who adopted Albie's calming techniques independently after repeated bedtime readings. This transformative power comes through stories children genuinely enjoy, allowing them to internalize emotional tools through repetition and engagement.
Beyond creating meaningful books, Sarah partners with Love Smiles to bring comfort through stories to children battling cancer. She understands firsthand how books can provide normalcy during life's hardest moments, recalling how her own mother helped her find joy during homeless periods in her youth.
Discover how these lovable monsters are changing lives at MonstersOnMillStreet.com, where you can explore the books, donate to pediatric cancer patients, and find educational resources to help the children in your life build emotional resilience – one monster at a time.
@Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Chapters
00:00 - Meeting Sarah Sparks and Her Monsters
02:19 - Brain Injury to Children's Books
06:22 - Teaching Emotional Skills Through Stories
09:05 - The Angriest Monster's Grounding Techniques
15:17 - Max and the Messiest Monster
18:20 - High Energy and the Bounciest Monster
26:03 - Social Anxiety and Self-Confidence
34:22 - The Strongest Monster and Resilience
38:19 - Sarah's Personal Story of Resilience
44:20 - Love Smiles: Books for Children with Cancer
51:51 - Using the Books at Home and School
59:24 - Episode Closing and Call to Action
Transcript
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Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
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I am Anne.
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Today we're welcoming the compassionate Sarah Sparks award-winning children's author, mom of three and the heart behind the Monsters on Mill Street series.
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These aren't just bedtime stories.
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They're lifelines for kids navigating big emotions, tough changes and the chaos of growing up.
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Rooted in Sarah's own journey through trauma and healing, including a life-changing brain injury, her books help children name their feelings, face their fears and build resilience with heart and imagination.
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Recognized by the Choice Awards, her stories tackle real-life challenges like anger, adhd, anxiety and fear, reminding kids and grown-ups, by the way, that calm and courage is the way to go.
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Sarah also donates her books to the Love Smiles program, which helps pediatric cancer patients, proving that stories can provide comfort and entertainment as children heal.
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Today we're going to talk a little bit about all of her books, including her two newest releases, and we will talk why self-confidence matters and how one book can change everything.
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Sarah, I'm so glad to have you here.
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Hi, thank you so much for having me.
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And, by the way, I did read all your books.
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I got them all on Amazon and I love the illustrations.
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They are all unique monsters.
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By the way, what inspired you to create your stories around monsters?
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What inspired you to create your stories around monsters?
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Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad you love them.
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They are definitely fun and silly.
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You know it's interesting.
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I didn't set out to create a children's book series.
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I didn't set out to create a book about monsters at all.
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You know, what ended up happening is one day it was Thanksgiving a few years back and I slipped and fell and I fell in one of the worst rooms in the house you could fall in.
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I fell in the bathroom and there's a lot of hard surfaces there and I hit my head off of I don't know how many quite a few.
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But what ended up happening is I ended up being taken to the ER.
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I had a traumatic brain injury.
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Yeah, it was the start of something that I really wasn't prepared for.
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I wasn't expecting, because what ended up happening after that is you know, there's so many things that we take for granted when it comes to our brain, everyday tasks like reading a grocery list, playing with our kids, driving.
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There's just so many things that we do, unconsciously, I think.
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And after that head injury, I couldn't do those things.
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I run a small business and I was struggling with that because I couldn't read emails.
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Even the words just wouldn't stay on the page.
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They kept floating around a lot.
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I couldn't retain them.
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Like I said, I couldn't even shop at a grocery store.
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So all of these things had just sort of upended my life and I was feeling like I couldn't touch anything or do anything without it breaking.
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It was a very, very strange, strange feeling to have where you couldn't think through things.
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But amidst all that, for some reason these stories I could see these monsters so clearly and I knew they were monsters and I started writing and it was a lifeline for me.
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You know, when you feel like the world is falling apart around you, you kind of cling to what you can do still and what you can do well and where that hope is, you cling to it like a life raft, and so these monsters were my life raft.
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What I realize now, I think looking back on it, you know I mentioned little things like playing with my kids was even hard Because when you have a traumatic brain injury, there's challenge that you have with outside stimulus.
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It can be very hard to process noise and movement and things of that nature, and kids are noisy and they move around a lot and so I had to work extra hard at those relationships at the time and what was interesting is, as I look back on it now, I see these monsters and I realize, you know, I was writing our life, I was writing what we were living, I was taking the challenges that my kids were facing and that we were working through as a family, and I was capturing them and I was writing them down and it was my way of holding on to them, I think, and holding on to those moments and those memories, before my brain forgot them and let them slip away, and really it was my way of working through, I think, all of the challenges that we were facing in that time because of my brain injury as a family, and so that's how they came to existence.
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It's a really long-winded way of saying they were just always monsters and they were my kids.
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They were a part of you.
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You can feel that you were able to put them on the page.
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What a gift.
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It was therapeutic.
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I've always been a storyteller but I've always told other people's stories and this was the very first time when I paused and stopped and I told my own stories.
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And, yeah, I was telling our lives.
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I was telling what we were living, Like I said, the challenges that my kids were facing when they were dealing with big emotions and didn't know how to cope with them, when they were dealing with anxiety and we were talking through that.
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How do we overcome those anxious feelings?
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Or my favorite one, the messiest monster?
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You know what family doesn't have a moment where their kids are going from activity to activity and toys are getting left about or the art project is still on the dining table?
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So these were the little moments where they were the teachable moments, when we were trying to encourage my kids to grow and learn these sort of soft skills and how we were teaching them those soft skills.
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That's really where these books are coming in.
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That's how I was teaching my kids these soft skills.
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I truly appreciate this series on so many levels.
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You know, our children's mental health has never been more important, especially in the world that we live in right now and there's so much coming at our kids.
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And what we need, now more than ever, are resources like Monsters on Mill Street, books that are positive, uplifting and filled with hope.
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You know, because there's so much negative out there, we need stories that say you can do this, you know we're here for you.
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Come talk to us, let's figure this out together.
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What I love most, and I love so much about your books but is how your books open the door for parents to sit down and talk with their kids like what you kind of just touched on about hard topics in a fun, engaging, meaningful way, and you've said, I hope, to give kids the language, courage and imagination to understand themselves, and that mission shines through on every single page.
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I just wanted to let you know that.
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That is so good to hear because it means that I'm doing something right.
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That's that is so good to hear, um, because it means that that I'm doing something right.
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You know, when people say that, um, when we hear that from from you, from parents, from teachers, um, when folks come up to me and they say this book made a difference, um, in my child's life, and I I hear that so many times, um, you know, I, I recall a story that a mom had told me once the family was going through a very difficult divorce, and you know, divorces, it's never easy on anyone involved.
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Right.
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And it was especially difficult on her little one.
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And the little girl was going from house to house, you know, back and forth from one parent to the next, and you know the mom was saying how she could see.
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It was so very hard for her to really even understand what was happening and how that was manifesting in her little self was she was getting angry and frustrated, she couldn't control this.
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Sure, she was getting angry and frustrated, she couldn't control this, sure.
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And so you know the mom would expect it, you know her little girl would walk through the door and she knew that that day, when she walked through the door and she was coming from the other parent's house, she was going to be this big bundle of emotion, a tornado, and the mom had to, she was planning for that, she, just she expected it.
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But one day the little girl came home and she, she was very quiet and she sat on the couch and she just started, you know, playing with her toys and feeling her blanket.
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She had a very soft, fluffy pink blanket and the mom thought, you know, this is, this is a little weird.
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You know, this is abnormal, what's, what's going on?
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Yeah, and you know the little girl said I just I need a moment.
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I need a moment and my blanket just feels so soft and I just wanted to feel it and I just needed a moment.
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At the mom, we had exchanged information when she had bought my books as we had met at a conference.
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And she texted me immediately after and she said you will never believe what happened.
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We have been reading these books together every night at bedtime.
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She was gravitating toward the angriest monster on Mill Street.
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This is a monster that has explosive, big emotions in the book and she wanted to read that over and over.
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And what this little girl had actually done through this book is she had taught herself grounding techniques, so she was using her five senses to calm her anger and frustration in that moment.
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And the mom said this is amazing.
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She's taught herself this because she's identified with the character in the book, because she's loved the story so much and we've read it over and over that she's actually internalized that, learned that, and it's stories like those you know when you hear them.
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I'm doing my job right as an author, as a children's book author, if that's how children are receiving and families are receiving these stories, and it's an amazing feeling.
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It's a beautiful story and when I read the Angriest Monster, it was the same thing.
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You know, when I saw those grounding techniques in there, it was so beautifully done because I have three autistic children and those are the kinds of things that you know.
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It's so visual, they can actually look at it and see and that you can do those things see, hear, taste, all those different things to bring you back to center and I thought that that was so beautifully done in your book.
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What you're doing is helping parents have these honest conversations beautifully done in your book.
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What you're doing is helping parents have these honest conversations.
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You know you're creating a safe space where children feel seen and where they are supported.
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And the amazing thing is, what I really love about the creation of these stories and how they come together and the way they come together, is that never in any of these stories do we ever tell a child what to do or how to feel.
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Or you know, you don't know.
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Like you said, the angriest monster.
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You don't actually know why the angriest monster is angry.
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But through the lens of this, monster.
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That's a good point.
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That's a really good point.
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Right, I mean, you know, there are so many reasons why we can feel anger in this world.
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Right right.
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You know, when you're little somebody could have drawn on your paper, or you didn't get to go, and you know go to the activity you wanted.
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Or you know your mother wouldn't buy you the candy bar at the checkout aisle in the grocery store.
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It could be any number of reasons or it could be a very serious reason on the grocery store.
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It could be any number of reasons or it could be a very serious reason.
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You know, like the little girl whose parents were going through the divorce, they may not even be able to articulate why they're feeling angry, what that situation is, but they feel it and it feels like your fur is on fire and you could huff and puff tornadoes and you want stomp earthquakes and you just feel like you're going to explode.
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And that feeling is how we're connecting with the kids.
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We're trying to give them a character they can really relate to and then through that character's eyes, through those stories, the kids themselves are coming up with the solutions to those challenges.
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They're identifying with the monster and they're identifying with the solution because they're feeling it and they're coming to those realizations themselves.
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It's never an adult or grown-up saying this is how you handle a situation when you're angry, because I think when we're dictating to children, it doesn't.
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You know, they may learn something from it, but does it really stick the first time or the second time or the third time?
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When they feel it themselves and it's experienced, then it's more likely to stick.
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And if they love the story and are reading it again and again.
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They're getting that message you know over and over again.
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Yeah, exactly, and I think that they can really connect with these monsters.
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And hopefully, like you said, with it being so visual and colorful and fun that they're connecting.
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And you know, I remember when I was little I always wanted my mom to read the same books over and over again.
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Yes, yes, I had them memorized and she was probably sick of reading them.
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But hopefully, you know, that's what I want with these books.
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I want kids to want to read them and then get those underlying messages.
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Another great aspect of the book the Angriest Monster was when we're upset, we really can't see the solution, or anything for that matter.
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And what I loved about it is how he calmed down and he saw the beauty around him.
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And how true is that when we're in the thick of things and we don't notice that the solution, we don't see the beauty right in front of us.
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So if you could talk more about that and what Albie learned in your book.
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Yeah, so Albie is our angriest monster, and what we see him go through is this transformation.
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Again, we don't know what he's mad at, but we know he's mad at something.
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And he's so mad that his size grows to the size of his anger.
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His physical body grows so he's up past the rooftops and up toward the stars, and so we see that unfold in that feeling of anger unfold.
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But then we see this moment where he is just so overwhelmed and he says you know, this is not what I want.
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There has to be something that can help me put this all right.
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And so he takes a deep breath and he thinks you know what can I hear, smell, taste and see?
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And he starts to pay attention to those little things around him.
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You know, the cool breeze, he can taste the salty tears that are rolling down his cheek.
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And eventually he sees this rainbow.
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You know he can see a rainbow and he watches the colors of the rainbow fall and bounce off the rain.
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The rain is symbolic of his tears.
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You know, he floods Mill Street with his, with his tears, and causes chaos.
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And so there's a lot of things there.
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There's, there's deep breathing, so so calming techniques through through breath.
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There's grounding techniques through the senses, finding the five things.
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What can you, you know, see, smell, taste, hear, feel.
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And then there's also this idea, which is really cool.
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You know, a lot of folks use glitter jars or those calming.
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You know they'll shake it up and they'll look at the glitter and they'll watch the glitter fall.
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My daughter does that.
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I think it's a great tool.
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It's so, so calming, in the sense that the glitter is almost like the storm you're feeling and as you're watching it you know your heart rate is going down.
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You're actually it's almost symbolic of your mind calming and clearing and that storm clearing through this glitter jar, and so that's also what we kind of see through this rainbow at the end and the colors that are falling and bouncing off the raindrops in the rain.
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And the really neat thing is is, I think, especially with Albie's story is when you get to the very end.
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Yes, his tempers calm down, but there's still this huge mess that he's left in his wake.
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And when we throw a tantrum sometimes our anger.
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It leaves scars and he rolls up his sleeves and he starts getting to work fixing all that chaos he caused and so there's that sense of responsibility and ownership at the end too, that we try to bring out through this.
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I loved that because in the book you know you're showing that anger itself isn't bad, but simply a feeling that needs to be understood and expressed in a safe, healthy way, without hurting themselves, others or anything around them.
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I think that that was a really important message in the book.
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And hopefully that again, as kids read this over and over, it becomes a part of them and they begin to practice those tools and techniques over time.
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I think that's you know.
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I was thinking about this the other day, not just with the Angriest Monster, but also with some of the newer books that we have coming out too with the Awesomest Monster on Mill Street, with the Strongest Monster on.
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Mill Street.
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Yeah, we'll talk about them yeah.
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I'm excited.
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I mean, I'm excited about them.
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I think they're my newest favorites.
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But I think with all of these you know the tools and techniques as kids practice them over and over and they become a part of us.
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Then when we need to fall back on those things, when things go terribly wrong in our lives, which sometimes they do.
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Life is not perfect.
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They do that's life.
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Hopefully these are so ingrained in us that they become our habits, because we tend to fall back on our habits when things go topsy-turvy.
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And if this is habit for us and if we're familiar with it and this is our safe zone, then these are good skills to be building up in that safe zone.
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Sure, habit-forming skills, habit-forming toolbox that we have.
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Right, absolutely.
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I do want to touch on the messiest monster, because I loved Max.
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He is so cute.
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There is a part in the book where he's cleaning and organizing and like what you were just talking about with the glitter, it was satisfying.
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It brought like this satisfying feeling in me, as also an autistic individual, an adult that organizing and looking at those couple pages where he's putting everything in its place, I was like, oh, that it even brought in an emotion within myself.
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And I have to tell you it's.
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You know, cleaning can be hard.
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Some people love to clean, some people really like things nice and orderly, sure, and that's great.
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I am not one of those people who falls back onto that naturally.
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My kids are not those types of people who fall back onto that naturally.
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I think it's the ADHD in us.
00:19:16.448 --> 00:19:20.761
Honestly, I have it and I've passed it along to my kids with flair.
00:19:22.424 --> 00:19:23.066
That's awesome.
00:19:24.307 --> 00:19:25.568
They've got the best of me.
00:19:27.652 --> 00:19:28.373
That's so funny.
00:19:28.713 --> 00:19:32.271
It's a little more challenging for them because their brains are moving so quickly.
00:19:32.271 --> 00:19:46.771
They want to do an art project and they get so excited and they break out all the markers and the glitter and the glue and the paper and the whatever else they can get their hands on, we have a whole cupboard of crafty stuff that they'll just open and empty and then they'll want to run outside and play.
00:19:47.540 --> 00:19:48.444
Oh, let's go play soccer.
00:19:48.444 --> 00:19:50.688
Oh, you're putting the swimming pool out for later.
00:19:50.688 --> 00:19:53.425
I want to do that now, and they'll leave it all behind.
00:19:53.425 --> 00:20:01.044
There'll be puzzle pieces on the ground or there'll be something that they've worked on, and it's not like they were intending to leave it all behind.
00:20:01.044 --> 00:20:15.823
They just got so caught up in the moment and they had to do the next thing, the next fun thing, and so, with Max, I think, bringing that out that they're not, they're definitely not being naughty, you know what I mean.
00:20:15.823 --> 00:20:16.285
It's not a bad thing.
00:20:16.285 --> 00:20:19.634
They're being kids, they're enjoying life, they're having fun, they're learning and in that process.
00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:26.546
sometimes we get a little messy and so it's, you know, it's just reminding them that, okay, let's put this away, let's, let's.
00:20:26.546 --> 00:20:31.910
What is that memory trigger that we need to remind them, as parents, to tidy up their things?
00:20:31.910 --> 00:20:32.790
And so that's what you'll.
00:20:32.790 --> 00:20:35.653
You'll hear me saying in our house, a lot is what would Max do?
00:20:35.653 --> 00:20:37.355
You know you're going out to play.
00:20:37.355 --> 00:20:38.816
Let's look at the living room floor.
00:20:38.816 --> 00:20:39.997
You guys just did puzzles.
00:20:39.997 --> 00:20:41.602
What would Max do?
00:20:41.602 --> 00:20:48.865
And so it's a trigger in our house now to oh yes, I have to put this away before starting the next fun thing.
00:20:49.086 --> 00:20:56.106
Yeah, I loved that because you know it really does help parents use Max to encourage responsibility.
00:20:56.988 --> 00:21:24.964
We have classroom posters as well that we actually we put on our website and teachers can use too, and Max is one of them and the big banner over it is what would Max do, and so it's a way of of helping to teach to classroom organization, especially at the beginning of the year when kids are trying to get those, you know, systems in place and processes in place in a new class and so, yeah, it's what would Max do, and it's a nice way of making cleaning and making organizing fun, I hope.
00:21:25.404 --> 00:21:28.028
And Bex in the Bounciest Monster.
00:21:28.028 --> 00:21:41.510
She had a little bit of ADHD, I would say a lot of energy needed, help with self-regulation, for sure, you know, bex is the definition I would say of high energy.
00:21:41.510 --> 00:21:46.626
And for families navigating ADHD or sensory needs, how can this book help them?
00:21:47.228 --> 00:21:51.634
Oh my gosh, You've hit the nail on the head with that book.
00:21:51.634 --> 00:21:55.579
I mean all the books.
00:21:55.579 --> 00:22:02.148
Like I said, they're based on my children and they're based off of, in particular, adhd challenges that we've had to figure out and come up with new ways of communicating.
00:22:02.148 --> 00:22:11.144
And high energy is so prevalent in my household, my middle daughter.
00:22:11.144 --> 00:22:16.823
She was actually the one who first inspired Bex's story in the Bounciest Monster on Mill Street.
00:22:16.823 --> 00:22:20.413
I used to say her default state was upside down.
00:22:20.413 --> 00:22:24.606
She would watch TV upside down.
00:22:24.606 --> 00:22:25.449
During the wintertime.
00:22:25.449 --> 00:22:29.173
We had to put one of those mini trampolines in our sitting room because she had so much energy.
00:22:29.173 --> 00:22:34.839
We'd have to say go bounce on the trampoline, just go count, see how many times you can bounce on that little trampoline.
00:22:34.839 --> 00:22:38.267
And she'd get up to like 400 times and she still wasn't tired.
00:22:39.689 --> 00:22:40.330
Oh, my goodness.
00:22:41.051 --> 00:22:49.182
So it's, you know, high energy for them is normal.
00:22:49.201 --> 00:22:49.923
They're just bursting.
00:22:49.923 --> 00:22:50.503
They're ready to go.
00:22:50.523 --> 00:22:58.384
That's their baseline, yeah it's their baseline, their baseline, and as parents, it can be tiring sometimes.
00:22:58.384 --> 00:23:13.054
If I'm honest, I want to keep up with them, but we have so many other things that our minds are focusing on, you know, and we don't always have that same level of energy at the same time that our kids might.
00:23:13.799 --> 00:23:14.603
And why not?
00:23:14.603 --> 00:23:17.070
Why doesn't that happen?
00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:23.993
I wish, I wish, if we could bottle it, if we could just bottle that energy and share it, that would be amazing.
00:23:24.259 --> 00:23:28.070
Take a drink of it, and so we can, you know, meet them where they are.
00:23:28.799 --> 00:23:34.029
Yes, yes, and so you know, I think it's through Bex's story.
00:23:34.029 --> 00:23:36.114
It's a way of saying a few things.
00:23:36.114 --> 00:23:44.888
One, you know, it's okay to have energy Bouncing is fun, being energetic is fun but there's a few things that we need to sort of think about.
00:23:44.888 --> 00:23:48.872
You know, we need to think about the space around us, the people around us.
00:23:48.872 --> 00:23:55.010
You cannot do a cartwheel if your grandmother is sitting on the couch right there because your feet are going to kick her.
00:23:55.010 --> 00:24:00.653
Like let's not do that in the house right by a person who you might hurt.
00:24:00.653 --> 00:24:03.731
You know it's not the right time or the right space.
00:24:03.731 --> 00:24:08.527
Just like Bex, she bounces through the playground, she almost gets hit by the swings.
00:24:08.527 --> 00:24:10.432
She bounces through a picnic.
00:24:10.432 --> 00:24:12.104
She splashes mud all over everyone.
00:24:12.104 --> 00:24:14.229
Her bounce is just out of control.
00:24:14.589 --> 00:24:24.951
The really cool thing is, you know, I was talking with a preschool teacher when these books first came out and we were really, you know, pulse, checking them and testing them in classrooms to see what the reaction was.
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