The Overthinkers’ Club: Happy List – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: funny, realistic picture of tweenhood.
Children’s book title: The Overthinkers’ Club: Happy List.
Children’s author: Nat Luurtsema.
Children’s illustrator: Cécile Dormeau.
Genre: Children’s fiction, diary.
Published by: Usborne.
ISBN: 9781835409978.
Recommended for children aged: 9-12.
First published: Paperback March 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: children who enjoy diary-style humour and doodles, and want an honest story about friendships, family change, anxiety, and grief.
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Our review:
Birdie is 12. She lives with her brother Finn (15, sometimes spotty, often angry) and Dad. Mum left, she’s a climate activist travelling the world, but they FaceTime once a week.
Very soon, Birdie is going to become part of a blended family when they move in with Dad’s girlfriend Maxie, and her kids Jay and the Pea. As if that wasn’t enough to think about, Birdie’s hamster Pamela is ill, and she has to contend with the Cool Gang at school, who are just mean.
Add to that, Birdie is an Overthinker.
Overthinking feels like I’ve eaten rocks, and they are sitting in my stomach ready to be the world’s most pointy poo.
That’s why she and her best friend Chloe have made the Happy List.Gratitudes
Drink water
Plants
Mood-boosting food
Self-care
Dancing
Sleep
Exercise
Horoscopes
Breathing
Live in the moment
Cold water swimming
Crystals
New friends
Birdie is more keen on some ideas than others. ‘New friends’, for example, is Chloe’s idea, and Birdie isn’t too happy about it…
The Overthinkers Club: Happy List is written in the style of a diary, with expressive doodles that bring Birdie’s thoughts to life. We see Birdie’s world through her eyes as she navigates the complexities of being an overthinking tween with perceptiveness and self-deprecating humour.
Birdie’s anxieties are shown in all their realness, including anxiety about becoming a teenager, something that many tweens feel but is rarely addressed in children’s literature. Bad things do happen, and Birdie’s fears about her beloved hamster are realised when Pamela dies, but her feelings and methods of processing loss are shown with sensitivity and in a way that will be helpful for many children. As Dad puts it:
You know when sometimes you worry something is going to happen… Then when it happens it’s almost a relief.
The complexities of friendships are a theme running through the book. Birdie and Chloe have always been a team of two, but Chloe wants to branch out and hang out with new people. When Chloe gets invited to a sleepover with the Cool Gang, Birdie has a lot of emotions to deal with, but things get even more complicated when it turns out that the Cool Gang are even meaner than she thought.
Birdie and Finn also have to deal with her feelings about moving in with Maxie, Jay and the Pea. The story explores the relationship between the two boys as well as between the boys and Birdie, and Birdie and Maxie. The relationship between Birdie and Finn and their mum is also handled with nuance.
The Overthinkers Club is a genuinely funny book (the incident that leads to ‘march of the poo-guins’, for example). Yet the messages about mental health, self-acceptance and the messiness of life are incredibly important, all the time presented in an accessible way.
You know when you tidy your bedroom? … Well, so when you begin tidying it gets much messier at first and it’s worse than when you began? … I think I’m in that bit right now.
The girls’ attempts to work through the Happy List are shown with refreshing honesty. It really is hard to live in the moment, drinking water can get annoying and Birdie definitely has her doubts about crystals. But this truthfulness, combined with Birdie’s humour, gives the picture of self-help that young people really need, an alternative to unrealistic social media expectations and filtered influencers.
This book is great for fans of Tom Gates or Diary of a Wimpy Kid who may be starting to look for something that addresses the reality of tween life.
Maybe in this life you will always have new things to worry about so all you can do is make sure you know how to handle them rather than trying to fix specific ones?
Our verdict:
A warm and funny book that addresses very complex issues in an accessible and sensitive way. It’s impossible not to love Birdie.
Many thanks to Usborne for the review copy.
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