Notes about: 

Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things

5-Star Must Read — Reedsy Discovery

“My seven year old son loved it and I think I may have enjoyed it more than him.”

“A valuable resource to aid children in recognizing and expressing their emotions.” — Tara Lewis, former Global Marketing Director at Disney Publishing Worldwide.

A funny adventure that makes the invisible impulses between feeling and acting visible.

There are children’s books that tell a story, and there are children’s books that quietly build a new way of seeing the world. Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things belongs to the second category.

At first glance, it is a playful adventure filled with imagination, mischief, and unusual little creatures. Beneath the humor, however, is a thoughtful exploration of something every child—and every adult—experiences: the constant flood of reactions that arrives throughout a day.

The book’s most original creation is the Flickerlings: tiny, unpredictable beings that represent not emotions themselves, but the reactions that follow them. They rush in to explain, protect, worry, interrupt, and demand attention. By giving these invisible reactions personalities, the story turns an internal experience into something children can see, laugh at, and understand.

The Flickerlings are not villains. They are trying to help. Their problem is that they are enthusiastic, dramatic, and convinced they should be steering. Children are invited not to fight their reactions, but to recognize them and decide when to listen.

The story’s one-day structure captures the exhausting reality of ordinary life—one moment, one reaction, one tiny crisis after another. The accumulating chaos makes the peaceful ending feel earned.

At the heart of the story is Hank, the imaginary friend who remains behind guarding the treasure. What might have been a simple childhood detail becomes a meditation on change, belonging, and the parts of childhood that remain meaningful even after the world moves on. Hank’s quiet loyalty transforms the adventure into something unexpectedly moving.

The book understands something important about childhood: the things adults may see as small—a fort, a game, an imaginary friend, a feeling—can be enormous to the child experiencing them.

Funny, inventive, and unexpectedly moving, Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things is a story about growing up without dismissing the worlds children create along the way.

Author’s Note

The Flickerlings were created to make something children experience every day—the moment between feeling something and reacting to it—visible and easier to talk about.

The Flickerlings are aware of the boys long before the boys become aware of them. Their cascade of thoughts, feelings, impulses, and distractions reflects the busy, darting quality of a young mind.

As the story progresses, the boys begin noticing the strange thoughts and competing impulses inside themselves, culminating in Theo’s creation of Hank’s Field Guide. At the same time, they are beginning to grow out of their imaginary world and leave Hank behind. The Field Guide represents what they carry forward from that world: a new way of noticing what happens inside them before they act.

The Flickerlings are not about stopping emotions or impulses. They are about learning to notice them—and discovering that there can be a moment between the feeling and the reaction when a choice becomes possible.