BOOK ON INSIDE CHILDREN’S MINDS

INSIDE CHILDREN’S MINDS, edited by Valerie Yule, Queensland: Bookpal. 2014.    Illustrated with children’s drawings, 470  pages, $31.95.. Paperback  ISBN 13: 9781742844299 ISBN 10: 1742844294. Hardback .ISBN: 978174284537.Available from Bookpal, online booksellers and Australian bookshops like READINGS, Carlton

The book is a selection from thousands of stories told to me by children about their drawings when I was a clinical child psychologist and schools psychologist, taking their stories down in shorthand. It includes research on children’s language.

The stories in this book show the world as children see it, and how they can imagine things they cannot see – a world of work and play, fairy-tales and space adventures, success and failure, and ways of living, the effects of physical and mental disorders, delinquency, rejection and despair, their imagination about war in fantasy and experienced in reality. and their common symbols. The differences between the stories told by fortunate children and those who are disadvantaged reveal the impact on the imagination of a child of stresses, in economic circumstances, war, family breakdown, physical and mental disabilities, and learning difficulties.  Adults may see only the outward life and actions of a ‘problem child’, but it is the vivid imaginative life that can hold the key to the child’s future. Many stories seem to foreshadow their teller’s adult prospects, and a child of six may already be preparing to hope or give up. So many already seem destined to be the villains and victims of the next generation.

Are there differences between girls’ and boys’ imagination? What leads delinquents to their antisocial ends?  Why do later adults act against their own interests? What insights are there to Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom

Psychiatrist Russell Gardner observes, ‘We use stories about ourselves to guide our every action’

“These stories not only give the reader much delight but also a rare and special insight into how children think.”  Dr Dorothy Rowe.

“Your spirited treasury is full of delights and wisdom, as I’d expect,” Marina Warner.

“I’m immensely impressed by the range and detail of the material. This must surely be a work of value to educators and psychologists .” Dr June Factor.

 The book is the fruit of 40 years of research during the author’s work as a clinical child psychologist, schools psychologist and academic, in Australia, Scotland, England and Belfast. There are defects in formatting because I have left writing up too late, and am now 86, recovering from a stroke.

This book is for the general public, psychologists, educators, and literary specialists.

Valerie Yule