At The News, we love to hear how our old scholars from Naracoorte High have flourished. We hope our students today can be inspired by our past student successes.

Linda Cawley (nee Stanford) has written a children’s book called The Trick with Sticks. It is cleverly written in a Dr. Seuss style to help children and their parents with their child’s friendships. We all know how friendships can be tricky, so the book explores the bonds of friendship and how those bonds are formed.

The story talks about a concept of us all having sticks and the choices we make and what happens to the sticks, as a result of our choices. It expresses in a fun and light-hearted way, what behaviours help form a friendship and what behaviours break a friendship by using sticks as a visual to represent the bonds of friendship. The concept explores when you form or when you maintain a friendship, you are putting ‘sticks on the pile’ and the more ‘sticks you put on the pile’, the stronger the friendship. This story looks at what behaviours elicit positive responses, which results in putting sticks on the pile. However, you can also lose or have sticks taken from the pile and the story talks about those behaviours and how it makes others feel. Sometimes you are just orbiting around friendship groups, holding your sticks, you are not part of the group or putting ‘sticks on the pile’, but it is a good place to observe what is going on.

The Trick with Sticks is an uplifting story with a message of self-worth and acceptance, as well as there being times when you need to walk away. It is ok to be different and at times everyone feels like they are on the outer, but if you continually work at your friendships, by putting our “sticks on the pile”, you will gradually build those bonds.

This book has been beautifully illustrated using dogs as the characters. Dogs symbolise loyalty and friendship and as a bonus, they like sticks too! It was Linda’s teenage daughter’s idea to use dogs as the main characters in the book. Her daughter created the book’s character concept drawings, as well as drawing some of the actual illustrations in the book, including the front cover.

The hope is this simple strategy can help you explain the unwritten rules of friendships to your children. We can take control and can learn what we need to do and how the bonds of friendship are formed. The book has been recommended by Psychologists, Educators, Counsellors. Occupational Therapists and Autism SA.

A conversation with Linda.

The News: Where did the idea for this story come from?

Linda: “Well, it all started one night with a box of matches! My husband and I were talking to our children about issues with their friendships and we were trying to describe how the bonds of friendships are formed. There happened to be a box of matches on the table, so we tipped the matches out and started talking about what types of behaviours earn matches and which ones don’t and how if you are orbiting friendship groups you are neither earning matches nor losing them and we started creating piles… This book started as a poem I wrote for my children to help them with their friendships. The concept seemed to really strike a chord with them, and it really seemed to help, so I thought, if this can work for our children, maybe it can help other children as well?

The matches became sticks, and the poem became a book. I received amazing and quite overwhelming positive feedback from professionals who work with children, which was encouraging and reaffirming that maybe this really was something which could help other children, their parents and teachers.

The book has been designed so you can pick up the story at any point to discuss your child’s day. You can hone into the relevant part of the story and relate your child’s behaviour with a correlating behaviour in the book and talk about what happened to the sticks. One way is to ask your child when they come home from school if they think they put any sticks on their pile today? However, there are many opportunities for parents to talk to their children about their child’s tricky situations throughout the story.”

The News: What was it like to publish a book?

Linda: “There are two pathways to publishing a book. You can either be accepted by a publisher or self-publish. I researched both pathways and according to reviews and guidelines regarding finding a publisher, the advice was you can send your manuscript and if you haven’t heard back by 6 months, you can presume it is a no! I decided I wasn’t going to sit around for 6 months waiting to maybe hear back and have now self-published. I joined a writer’s group and received great advice from an experienced author who herself has published many books. The advice no doubt saved me a lot of time and angst and with people buying books online, Amazon is a great platform for self-published authors.”

The News: Where can people purchase The Trick with Sticks?

Linda: “The book is available for purchase on amazon. com.au (on the Amazon website search for “The Trick with Sticks”) and it makes a huge difference if you can write a review of the book on Amazon and on my Facebook page (Facebook.com.au/LindaCawley11).”

This article appeared in Naracoorte Community News, 4 August 2021.