Your Mind Makes Thoughts Like Your Butt Makes Farts

by Todd Strauss-Schulson, Phil McAndrew (Illustrator)

Overview

A funny, gross book about mindfulness for kids.

Sometimes we have nightmares or fears, and anxieties can sneak into our day.
And when you’re a kid, you don’t understand these thoughts or what they’re trying to say.
But this book will teach you how to make friends with your mind—
instead of fearing what’s inside.

Your Mind Makes Thoughts Like Your Butt Makes Farts is unlike any other book about mindfulness for kids. With gross-out humor and hilariously disgusting illustrations, it will help kids understand that they don’t have to listen to everything their mind says—and realize that thoughts (like gas) will pass.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781614297826
Publisher:	Wisdom Publications MA
Publication date:	02/28/2023
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	343,684
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 12.50(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Todd Strauss-Schulson is an award-winning writer/director. His films include A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas; The Final Girls, which premiered at SXSW and has amassed cult status, counting Stephen King, Sam Raimi, and Quentin Tarantino as vocal fans; Isn't It Romantic, starring Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Divine, and Priyanka Chopra; Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, which he directed and produced alongside Elizabeth Banks and Megan Amram; and most recently, Silent Retreat, starring Isabella Rossellini, a silent comedy set at a meditation retreat. Todd has been meditating for over a decade and has sat numerous retreats with many of the most notable Buddhist teachers in the United States. In fact, this book came to him while he was on one. His last book, Scrawl, which he wrote with his mother and sister, as a tribute to his late father, was published by Rizzoli in 2019.

Phil McAndrew is an award-winning illustrator, a cartoonist, and a writer. He is the author and illustrator of Crying in Front of Your Dog and Other Stories (Uncivilized Books, 2013). He also illustrated the Caveboy Dave series of graphic novels written by Aaron Reynolds (Viking Books, 2016 and 2018) and Monster Science by Helaine Becker (Kids Can Press, 2016). Phil has contributed comics and humor to The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, Popula, AWRY, The Nib, and many other publications. Phil lives in the Buffalo, New York, area and he currently teaches part-time in the illustration program at Syracuse University. He enjoys digging around in his garden and playing drums in bands with his friends.

Editorial Reviews

As an anxious little girl with an overactive mind, I wish I had this book. Luckily, now I get it as an anxious adult woman!

Zoe Lister-Jones

OMG! This book is the perfect way to introduce the essence of mindfulness to kids: not by ‘meditating’ but by learning to not take the mind so seriously. Honestly, though, I and a lot of my grown-up students could learn from it too.”

Jay Michelson

This book elegantly (and sometimes disgustingly) explains a concept that it takes most people their entire lifetimes to learn: mindfulness. Every kid should have this read to them. Every person should read this!”

Emily V. Gordon

"As a proud member of the anxious community and someone with a million concurrent thoughts, I truly love this book. Not only is it beautiful and funny, but it has a simple, yet profound message — you are not your thoughts. Todd makes a complicated lesson easy to grasp, a lesson that took me years to learn, and I’m so jealous that kids will just get it handed to them on a silver butt-farting platter."

Gil Ozeri

"Todd's book is ostensibly for kids, but I’m using it for myself. It’s sweet, funny, beautiful, appropriately gross, and perfect for any child struggling with that very loud mind.”

Mary Stancavage

Your Mind Makes Thoughts Like Your Butt Makes Farts is about the most useful analogy I’ve ever heard for the relentless brain chatter we all hear. This funny book has exactly the right amount of grossness to keep every eight-year-old mindfully enjoying a book about mindfulness. Don’t let the boogers scare you off; the message is spot on."

Michael Ian Black

Teachers are counseled to speak in the idiom of the people. The salutary effects of metacognition cannot simply be recommended to children: we must speak in the language of farts. I trust this funny/serious book will afford children new insights into their inner life and help them become a little less intimidated by the off-gassing of their brains.”

Matthew Brensilver

Knowing images can be powerful teachers, to help everyone in the family take thoughts less seriously and find a little perspective and playfulness around them, Todd Strauss-Schulson came up with surprising analogies. Phil McAndrew was clearly up to the task of making these illustrations unforgettable. Together, they'll take you on a fun and highly liberating ride!"

Pascal Auclair

I read books to my children and now my grandchildren. I’ve never come across a book that explains so amusingly, and in terms children can easily understand, that our minds play bad tricks on us. This book helps explain these tricks, providing us with a first step to finding serenity again.

Isabella Rossellini

I wish I had had this funny, thoughtful book growing up as an anxious child. Maybe I’d be less stressed about writing this blurb. I am SO stressed writing this blurb. Can one of you please write it for me?”

Megan Amram