Why Isabel Is Invisible, a guest post by Sally J. Pla

When I was a kid, I’d beg and cry every morning not to be sent to school. 

It wasn’t a bad school! It was a small suburban K-6 with perfectly nice teachers. To any outsider, it would look great. But to me, it felt like being trapped in a crowded pulsing blinding nightmare where people constantly put me on the spot with indecipherable demands, and there were screeching bells and lights and shouts and bewildering expectations at every turn. I wanted to run and hide. I wanted to be invisible.

My anxiety would start ratcheting on the morning bus. It was as if my heart was trying to burst out of my chest on frantic wings. Eventually I confided this to my grandmother, worried I had some traumatic, exotic ailment. She only rolled her eyes and said, “Pshaw! It’s just a few butterflies.” 

Why did she call them butterflies? It felt far beyond “butterflies.” It felt more like big dusty worry-moths, flapping inside my chest.  

The recollection of these childhood sensory struggles—and how frustrating it was when loving, well-meaning adults brushed them off and dismissed them—are what brought Invisible Isabel into being.

Isabel has a brain that works just a bit differently. She is sweet, sensitive, gentle, and anxious. She tries so hard to do all the right things, to learn to withstand all the hubbub and hullaballoo of school and home life–what she calls the Too-Muchness. 

More than anything, Isabel wants to befriend other girls. She yearns for connection, but doesn’t know how to go about it. She is just a bit too different, too “off.” And her peers treat her like she is invisible.

It’s a fairly common phenomenon for neurodivergent, socially awkward, or autistic girls to try and attach themselves to a “Queen Bee” girl. This way, they feel they will have a protector, a captain to guide them through the tricky social waters. And so, Isabel tries so very hard to befriend the new popular Monica.  But Monica is a sly bully, with problems of her own.

In this story, I also wanted to address, and honor, the mind-body connection. How our worries manifest in our bodies. The difference between the discomfort we may feel from psychological versus physiological pain, and how it’s often almost impossible to distinguish between the two. Especially for the young. Isabel contends with both kinds of pain in this story. 

I know there are many, many little Isabels out there. I want to encourage them and show them love. I want them to see themselves validated and reflected and honored. Sensitive, anxious young kids need gentle stories of redemption and resilience written just for them.

And there are far too many anxious kids out there, these days, grappling with these sorts of invisible feelings and issues. Even before Covid, the CDC estimated that anxiety was affecting 9.4 percent of children between ages 3 and 17 (approximately 5.8 million kids). That number is surely much higher now, five years later, post-Covid.  And anxiety disorders increase with age: they now affect 31.9 percent of teens, according to the ADAA.

And please allow me to also mention that there are still far too many underdiagnosed autistic girls out there, invisible, and grossly misunderstood.

So, this is a little story to help our anxious young friends feel more ‘seen.’ And to see themselves, compassionately and authentically reflected. It is a story to help other young friends realize that the surface of someone may not reflect who they really are inside, or how much potential for goodness and fun and friendship they may have inside them. Even if they seem a little ‘off.’ 

We all have different reasons for reading. For me, I’m always in search of that “aha” moment of recognizing my own quirky inner truth in a story. I love it when, thanks to words on a page, I’m allowed inside another human mind and am happily shocked by some significant point of communion.

This is why it is my mission to populate children’s literature with as many natural, relatable, neurodivergent characters as I can. No more invisibility! No stigma, no shame. Let’s try to help all kids feel, and be, ‘seen.’

Thank you so much to the kid lit community for your wise and compassionate reading hearts. 

Meet the author

Sally J. Pla is an autistic children’s author and advocate whose last novel, The Fire, The Water, and Maudie McGinn, won the 2024 ALA Schneider Award for its literary depiction of disability. Find out more about her at sallyjpla.com.

About Invisible Isabel

From award-winning author Sally J. Pla comes an illustrated middle grade novel about introverted Isabel Beane, who learns to speak up to quiet her worries. This thoughtful, earnest story is perfect for fans of Elana K. Arnold and Leslie Connor.

Isabel Beane is a shy girl who lives in a home full of havoc and hubbub and hullabaloo. With five siblings, there is always too much too much-ness.

At school, there’s a new girl who is immediately popular, but she’s also not very nice to one person—Isabel.

Isabel has never felt more invisible. She begins to get bombarded by fears, like being abandoned by her classmates and taking the upcoming Extremely Important standardized test. Her fears feel like worry-moths that flutter in her belly. With every passing day, they seem to get stronger and stronger. How can Invisible Isabel make people listen? 

ISBN-13: 9780063268852
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 07/09/2024
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

Filed under: Guest Post