Page 7 - Microsoft Word - Thinking like a wallaby 14DEC16.doc

little and easy ones. ‘Thinking Like a Wallaby’ won’t give you the answers to the various

problems you might face. But it might help by giving you some new ways of thinking
about problems. And that could help you to find the best possible solutions.

Reading together

Before we really get started, let me suggest that you read this with someone else – a

parent perhaps, or an older sister or brother if you have one or can borrow one, or a

teacher or just a good friend. It helps to share with someone you trust as they can help
with some of the things you might not understand too well, or you can find out if they

have different ideas about what you are reading. But, if you are happier to read just by

yourself, that’s OK too.

How these ideas began

First of all, let me give you a bit of an idea about how this all works, by telling you how I
came to write this book.

I had written some stories for children about a snake who

would get into difficulties and then try to work out ways of
solving his problems. So he tried to think like other animals

– what would an elephant do if he was stuck on the wrong

side of a flooded creek? What would a kangaroo do if she was trapped by a scary

bunyip? Then, one day, I was telling a friend about my stories and she said that was a
good way of problem solving, and children needed to learn that sort of thing.

So that is how the idea for this book was born. It started off with a bit of spider thinking
– what would other people think about this idea? Then a bit of wallaby thinking – letting

my imagination take off. Then there was quite a lot of koala thinking – I actually woke up

one night with a lot of these ideas racing around in my mind, so I wrote them down as

soon as I could.

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