Mini and Milo: The Teeny-Tiny Voice by Venita DiMos and Natashia Curtin

Title: Mini and Milo: The Teeny-Tiny Voice

Author: Venita DiMos

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 8^th March 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 32

Price: $25.99

Synopsis: First title in a new series, with endearing and charming characters, Mini and Milo model emotional intelligence in stories filled with humour and heart.

This series follows the adventures of Mini and Milo as they navigate friendship and all its ups and downs – competitiveness, managing inner voices, learning to listen, and communicating effectively.

Mini has a tiny house, a tiny bedroom, and a tiny best friend who dreams of being a magician. She also has a big secret – she hears a tiny invisible voice that sometimes causes big trouble. Mini realises that just as she has rules to follow, she just might be able to set some for her own invisible mischief maker.

Big Skills for Mini People Mindset. Mini and Milo are endearing, charming, and relatable together they learn to deal with life’s big and small problems … building resilience and insight through trial and error and friendship.

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Mini is an elephant who lives with her mum in a tiny house, and she has a tiny bedroom. She also has a tiny rabbit friend called Milo who wants to be a magician. But Mini has a big secret – she has a tiny invisible voice that follows her around – and this voice causes trouble, and makes Mini naughty, or doubt herself, and sometimes, she believes the mean things that it says to her. Mini wants to follow her mum’s rules and not get into trouble but the voice has other ideas – and it is up to Mini to find the courage to stand up to the voice.

The Teeny-Tiny Voice is the first in the new Mini and Milo series, and sees Mini the Elephant up against the challenge of the voice of doubt and mischief in her head as she tries to be good at home, concentrate at school, and make sure she follows the rules, and is brave when she has to go on stage – but that teeny-tiny voice keeps telling Mini to do the wrong thing, or that she can’t do something. So Mini sets about to prove the voice wrong and to try and behave, and make sure she is doing the right thing. Yet as the teeny-tiny voice fights back, Mini will soon find the power and strength within her to overcome the teeny-tiny voice of doubt and mischief, so Mini has to find a way to keep the voice from getting the best of her, and not taking over her life.

The Mini and Milo series has been set up to help children explore big feelings that they might not always be able to talk about – those feelings that we all have that are so hard to put into words because we don’t think anyone will be able to understand. And it is also about those life problems of all sizes that seem to be impossible to overcome or change in the moment, where we either need to sit with it ourselves for a bit or talk it through with someone, and sometimes it helps when we hear somebody else put what we are feeling or have been feeling into words – it helps us realise that we are not alone, that there are other people who know how we feel and what we are going through. So books like Mini and Milo reassure us that we are not alone, and I think this is powerful for people of all ages, because even as an adult, it can be hard to put feelings into words sometimes. Sometimes, the words we have aren’t enough. As a child, we might not have the words but seeing our feelings represented in a book like this can help us show people what we mean and can help people work out what we might mean.

I loved that humour and heart were used to explore Mini’s feelings – it was safe and something that all readers can relate to, because it touched on the sense that we all need someone to understand us, or a way to tell people how we feel. These books allow people of all ages to process their feelings, because there will always be times we all need to work out what we are feeling, and children’s books can be a safe and judgement-free way and place to do this, as the simplicity can really help readers find out how to talk about what they are feeling. I think Mini and Milo is going to be a good series to do this, and it will be interesting to see what other issues and feelings the series touches on.