Meet Wenlu!

...... the illustrator for my first three e-books (soon to be launched in print in Mandarin) ... here he is at his desk working on 'Loud Lyrebird' and 'Messy Mermaid' (the 'L' and 'M' stories from my A-Z Collection of Behaviour Tales) - a very talented artist ...

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My Japanese Book is now released - 'Stories to Touch the Hearts of Children'

This is an exciting moment for me - this book is a beautiful publication done by Tokyo Shoseki - it has a hard cover with dust jacket, and is illustrated throughout - thank you to Chinatsu Sunaga for all her hard work with translation! The book includes some new stories written for the tsunami survivors - you can read an example of one of these on my 'stories' links page - "The Flowered Kimono"

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THIRD BOOK AN E-BOOK??

Finished story no 26 last week - my A- Z Collection of Behaviour Tales is complete!! Now working on the editing and intro - soon plan to upload it as an e-book - watch this space - will be announcing the title soon!! Family members putting invaluable artistic support into the cover design - thank you Marika (and Jamie)!

China Tour - October 2012

Back from China - great tour - 4 cities in 3 weeks - and books selling like hotcakes! Many new stories created at workshops - what a privilege to be doing this work!

I also had a chance to tell some of my favourite stories to groups in bookshops - here is a pic of me telling the Star Apple to 200 people in Guangzhou ....

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Project for Japan

I have been both honoured and humbled by a request to work with a Japanese translator on a collection of stories for the tsunami survivors ​- I am working on some creative impulses for this now - this continues on from my attempt to write stories for national and global crisis   - I include two examples here:

 For a copy of 'The Shadow Giant' (a story for the global crisis) click here 

For a copy of 'The Sparkling River' (a story written after the Brisbane floods) click here

Book launch - 27th July 2012

Thanks for all the thoughts and well-wishes for the Australian launch of my 101 Therapeutic Stories book - it was a wonderful wonderful evening - and a special thank you to Amber Greene for her enthusiastic 'launch' speech and Jamie Perrow for his charismatic MC role ...

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Tales from the 'Story Doctor'

Stories can be a very effective tool today in addressing specific and general behaviour challenges in children, and there seems to be more and more need for such tools in our complex modern lives. I have worked with this tool in a two year contract with the Australian Government from 2001 to 2003, piloting Creative Parent Support Programs. This work often involved home visits to families where I observed difficult situations and then wrote a story (often feeling like a ‘story doctor’) to help heal the difficult behaviour. The work then extended into running Creative Discipline Courses for parents and teachers where the participants were encouraged to use imaginative approaches (songs, poems, stories ….) to handle discipline challenges – see table of documented story outcomes in the listed conference papers. The home visits plus the workshops has produced some very successful results, confirming for me, the parents and the teachers the place for metaphor and story in child-rearing practices. (Refer to my first posting for some examples of stories for specific and general behaviours).

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