Matching Tone to Topic in TOO Much, An OVERWHELMING DAY

The Rhyme Doctors LOVE mentor texts! We're always on the lookout for picture books where the rhyme choices perfectly match the tone and topic of the book. That is absolutely the case with TOO MUCH!: AN OVERWHELMING DAY by Jolene Gutiérrez.

 Inspired by her own experience with sensory processing disorder, Jolene wrote TOO MUCH!: AN OVERWHELMING DAY to explore the daily challenges of a sensorily sensitive child. The spare rhyme, coupled with  alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia, brilliantly depict the sounds and emotions associated with an overwhelming day. We've invited Jolene to HOUSE CALLS to share some of the decisions she made in creating this brilliant social emotional picture book in rhyme. 

How did you settle on rhyme as the best format for this story?
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When I was reflecting on my childhood and sensory overwhelm, the lines “Too loud!/too bright!/too itchy!/too tight!” popped into my head, and I knew that this story wanted to be told in rhyme.

What challenges did you encounter while working with this spare, rhyming format?

The fact that it was written in rhyme was my first challenge! I’m someone who tries to avoid writing in rhyme if possible because I struggle with it. Thank goodness for critique partners and agency siblings who are skilled rhymers!

Once my manuscript was on submission, my agent heard from three different editors. Each asked for revisions—very different revisions. In the end, I created three rhyming versions of this story and explored things like the caregiver’s voice, adding more dialog, and putting our main character in other overwhelming situations. I kept the same sparse rhyming couplet format in each of those versions, so that limited my word choices and meant more rounds of running stanzas by critique partners.

​The good news is that I love the published version because it’s very close to the original manuscript and all of the stanzas are true to my own experiences, with the exception of me not liking crunchy textures. I just needed the word “crunch” because I wanted to be able to write “Soft bananas? I’ll munch a bunch.”

What lines are you especially pleased with and why?

The opening lines use onomatopoeia to set the scene for how this day will be overwhelming:

And the slower, more peaceful pace of the final lines of the book bring us back to calm:
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When feelings go
on overload
I pause, and breathe,
and all is. . .slowed.

Thank you, Jolene, for giving us an inside peek into the creation of TOO MUCH!: AN OVERWHELMING DAY.  We recommend this excellent picture book for anyone looking for mentor texts on figurative language, strong end rhymes, and matching meter and tone to topic. 

More about our visiting HOUSE CALLS doctor: 
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Jolene Guitiérrez grew up on a farm in northeastern Colorado, surrounded by animals, plants, and history. She is an award-winning teacher librarian and has been working with neurodivergent learners at Denver Academy since 1995. She’s a wife of 25+ years and mama to two young adults, three dogs, two cats, and an ever-rotating variety of other rescue animals. She’s a contributor to If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility (Candlewick, 2025) and the author of Unbreakable: A Japanese American Family in an American Incarceration Camp (Abrams Childrens 2025, co-authored with Minoru Tonai), Mamiachi and Me (Abrams/Appleseed, 2024, co-authored with her son Dakota), The Ofrenda That We Built (Chronicle, 2024, co-authored with her daughter Shaian), Too Much! An Overwhelming Day (Abrams/Appleseed, 2023), the Stars of Latin Pop series (Rourke, 2021), Bionic Beasts: Saving Animal Lives with Artificial Flippers, Legs, and Beaks (Lerner, 2020), and Mac and Cheese and the Personal Space Invader (Clear Fork/Spork 2020). Find her online at www.jolenegutierrez.com or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @writerjolene.
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