Hervey Bay Queensland Australia

A wonderful thing about being a parent is introducing children to their own abilities.
One of which is firing up their imaginations. To see a child's face light up as they visualise their own 'word pictures' running through their heads is breathtaking. The child's face comes alive, their eyes twinkle and their joy is infectious.

Parents have to be very 'eagle-eyed' and discriminating about what their children learn.Young minds are like sponges soaking up everything, good or bad.

A downside to TV, DVD's and cable Television is that everything is done for the kids. They don't have to imagine anything at all.

Where with a book, written, spoken or read to them, the kids have to 'see' the pictures that the words conjure up for themselves. And each word has slightly different visuals for each person. This leads to an understanding of our language.

Many parents today, who work outside the home, often don't have the time to spend sitting and reading to a child. If the child feels that the parent is listening and sharing an audio book with them it makes them happy. This means the whole family gets to enjoy listening to a good story while jobs still get done.

Can you remember the time when a story was read to you? I can and I still remember how great it was to see the story in my head. One of my favourites was "The Loaded Dog" by Henry Lawson. Perhaps I related well to this story because we had a few sheep dogs on the property. These were 'working dogs' and not there for their good looks or amiable natures. They were there to work with the sheep and cattle.

And the intelligence differed between them too. In fact, to put it bluntly, we had one named "Rusty" who wasn't the brightest canine God put on earth. In short, he was very much like the happy, slobbering, grinning dog like Lawson was telling us about.

The antics of Lawson's dog were so similar to my own experience with Rusty that I still laugh over this story 40 years on. And yes, I have re-re-re-read that story many times and it still makes me laugh.

Such is the power of a good story well read.