Review: An A-Z Collection of Behaviour Tales by Susan Perrow

Susan Perrow is a world-renowned storyteller with multiple books behind her. Her newest book, Behaviour Tales – From Angry Ant to Zestless Zebra [sic], is a collection of 42 stories of Behaviour Medicine.

Susan was the founding teacher and instigator of Periwinkle Preschool in Byron Bay, and her work with young children at Periwinkle was the seed for her explorations into therapeutic storytelling.

As a lifelong writer, she was thrilled with the opportunity to share her own stories with the children but never more so than when a purpose-written story could effect change. Seeing the impact her stories could have on the children’s behaviour in particular was eye-opening and led her on an exploration to learn more about this magic.

Story Magic

This new book, An A-Z of Behaviour Tales, is a book for all children who have ever faced their own challenges or inner demon. Illustrated with sweet pencil drawings by Allmut ffrench, this paperback book should be in every travelling mum and dad’s backpack.

The book features therapeutic stories to help with anxiety, fussiness, jealousy, separation anxiety, shyness, perfectionism, and being scared – some of the issues children face both at home and on the road.

• There are healing stories for challenging behaviour such as kicking, being greedy, hurting other children, bullying and bossiness, being too loud, or obnoxious and restlessness.
• There are stories to help children overcome laziness, messiness, whinging, and uncooperativeness.
• There is even a story to help with the modern child’s first world problem – boredom.

In fact, there’s likely to be a story for any kind of challenge you may be facing!

Susan’s behaviour tale stories for children are designed to be a gentle therapy – there’s no need for recriminating discussions or over-the-top admonishments when a story can have a profound effect on the child’s ongoing behaviour without any of the guilt or shame.

Susan rounds off the stories with practical tips on how to extend the stories so they make even more of an impact. She provides a few ideas on how to make use of puppetry, drama, craft, games and songs complement the storytelling.

Proof is in the Pudding

I’ve been a friend and a fan of Susan’s for years, and in fact, Jack is lucky enough to attend Periwinkle Steiner Preschool again this year.

More importantly, I’ve been reading and telling Susan’s stories to my boys and to hundreds of children during my former life as a kindergarten teacher, and I’ve seen first hand how quickly these stories work to bring change.

When children are immersed in world schooling, and all the change that brings on a daily basis, a gentle story from this collection of tales can provide comfort and security.