I Hate Everything!

Some days just start badly and roll downhill from there. The kind of days where you hate getting dressed, hate your breakfast, hate that butterfly, that cake, and especially that flower. Hate. It. All.

Henn captures this beautifully with a young narrator having one of those days – the kind where nothing feels quite right and everything is slightly (or extremely) annoying. The twist? Our narrator – and their quietly patient companion – are both ghosts, rendered in classic blanket-over-head style. Why ghosts? Perhaps because emotions, like ghosts, can feel invisible and overwhelming, or perhaps simply because Henn knows how to use the simplest of shapes to convey the biggest of feelings.

Visually, this is a masterclass in tonal storytelling. Bold block colours shift with the narrator’s mood: red when emotions rage, through orange to a slow-simmering yellow, before looping back – tongue firmly in cheek – to a final blast of crimson. The visual palette is a roller coaster, and it mirrors the internal one.

The voice is gloriously sulky, exaggerated, and all-caps LOUD, but beneath the surface is real emotional literacy. This isn’t a tantrum for its own sake – it’s a moment of candid vulnerability, as a small person tries to name the bigness of their feelings. The comic timing is pitch-perfect, especially as the list of hated things spirals from socks to sunshine to Frank.

And when the tide finally turns (with a little gentle prompting from a friend), we’re reminded of something essential: that feelings are fleeting, that talking helps, and that sometimes the best cure for rage is a shared hiccup-laugh at how ridiculous we were feeling all along.

Big-hearted, brilliantly paced, and hilariously relatable, this is Henn at her best—playfully perceptive.