Paul Williams

Shelley Davidow

Drawing on years of experience of writing, teaching and publishing, this book offers essential tools for anyone interested in honing their craft. With a variety of exercises and freewriting prompts to help you try new styles and approaches, it is suitable for aspiring poets, non-fiction writers, novelists and all lovers of words.

An Introduction to Creative Writing Craft

Playing With Words

An “immensely intriguing” new approach “that can successfully combat the shame, anxiety, and blame that failing induces too readily in our society” (Laurie Hollman, PhD, author of Unlocking Parental Intelligence). We spend much of our lives trying to cope with failure. For many of us, adults and children alike, the prospect of failure looms as a debilitating concept in our minds. It can not only stop us from succeeding—it can stop us from even trying. Fail Brilliantly proposes a radical shift: erase the word and concept of failure from the realms of education and human endeavors. Replace it with new words and concepts. This shift in position has the potential to transform our lives . . . and ultimately reshape our definition of success.

Exploding the Myths of Failure and Success

Fail Brilliantly

Shaimaa Khalil

Two women. Two cultures. And a friendship that freed them both.​ 'We don't choose where we're born. Geography ends up being everything.' Shaimaa Khalil and Shelley Davidow met twenty years ago in the Middle East when Shaimaa was Shelley's student at the University of Qatar. Strangers in a strange land where the silencing and oppression of women is deeply entrenched, they immediately formed a deep and abiding bond. Shelley saw Shaimaa as her 'Rosetta Stone', helping her decode a culture and world so foreign it appeared to be from another planet. Shaimaa saw Shelley and her apartment as her 'Tardis', a space where she could glimpse a world she dreamed of inhabiting. Born a decade apart on opposite ends of the African continent - Shaimaa, an Arab Muslim from Egypt and Shelley an Ashkenazi Jew from South Africa - tell the story of a friendship that has defied historical, geographic and temporal boundaries, mapping the vast emotional and geographic territories they have travelled as women pushing against patriarchal confines over the past two decades. In an exchange of words and memories, Shaimaa and Shelley recall what shaped them, what broke them, and how they made themselves whole again through their interwoven stories.

Runaways

Doskonały poradnik, z którego dowiemy się, jak wychować dziecko odporne na stres. I nie chodzi tutaj o ochronę dzieci przed stresem i niepowodzeniami, ale o to, by nauczyć je odpowiednio stresem „zarządzać” i traktować go jak coś naturalnego. Davidow kompleksowo omawia wszystkie stresogenne czynniki, które mają wpływ na dzieci: szkołę, środowisko rówieśnicze, telewizję i nowinki techniczne, a także nawyki żywieniowe. Autorka przytacza wyniki wielu badań i posługuje się ciekawymi argumentami. W książce znalazły się rozmowy z rodzicami dzieci w różnym wieku.

Stresoodporne. Jak wychować dzieci odporne na stres

A must-read for every parent who wants to raise smart, emotionally stable, responsible, stress-proof kids! Stress is rising alarmingly in our children, both at school and at home. Across the world, hearts are racing, faces are pale — and most of the time we’re unaware that many of our children are chronically stressed. Drawing on cutting-edge research from the Institute of HeartMath, California, as well as Shelley Davidow’s extensive experience in working with children and teens, Raising Stress-Proof Kids explores the powerful and potentially long-term effects of stress on our children. Most importantly, it offers simple but effective steps that parents can take to minimise the impact of stress at home and at school. These include tools from the author’s ‘Restorative Parenting Toolbox’, empowering parents with the necessary skills to: • resolve behaviour issues • deal with temper tantrums • resolve sibling rivalries • handle bullying • cope with teenagers testing their independence • navigate the challenges posed by the virtual world, and • provide firm, effective guidance when problems arise. ‘A compelling, practical and informative guide for every parent …’ — Rollin McCraty PhD, Institute of HeartMath

Parenting Today's Children for Tomorrow's World

Raising Stress-Proof Kids

An exquisitely compelling story of courage, destiny and the search for home When orphan girl Bertha Frank gets onto a ship in New York in February 1937 to go to South Africa to marry a man she's never met, she doesn't know that she is repeating a journey to escape poverty and the persecution of the Pogroms made by her father from Lithuania to America in 1913, or that she is foreshadowing a journey Shelley Davidow, her granddaughter, will make from South Africa to America decades into the future. In 1937, she doesn't know that it will be fifty years before she returns to visit her home, nor that she will live through tumultuous social upheaval in an Africa on the brink of transformation. As a hopeful young adult, she cannot imagine the beauty, the love and the irreparable loss she will experience as a Jewish migrant in South Africa. Nor does she know that far in the future, her grandchildren will retrace her steps backwards to escape the violent, decaying outpost of white colonialism. In the 1980s, at the height of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow decides to run from her country, and spends the next two decades searching for home. Then, in 2012 she discovers a box of Bertha's letters and diaries. Shelley realises that her life is an echo of patterns and repeating journeys; that there is a whispering in the blood of our forebears that tells the story of all our lives. From the Pogroms of Eastern Europe, to America's Great Depression, to the rise and fall of Apartheid South Africa and finally to Australia in the 21st century, Whisperings in the Blood explores the emotional legacy that we inherit from our immigrant ancestors and the complex heartache of leaving the land of one's birth.

A Memoir

Whisperings in the Blood

The trendsetter eries are modern books of fiction centring the intersts of older teenagers. Written in a lively way and coming from new and established writers, their aim is to provide enjoyable, stimulating reading with which young people can closely identify.

The Rainy Season

As his days grow short and the Cloud of Ignorance suddenly becomes more dense, the Wise Enchanter sends his daughter, Gadrun, to find four children who can defeat Urckl, the Master of Ignorance and Shadows, by rediscovering the alphabet and stories.

A Journey Through the Alphabet

The Wise Enchanter

A brave, heartrending memoir of family, love and longing in the turbulent era of Apartheid in South Africa. During the terrifying years of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow's family was a crime. At a time when it was illegal for black and white people to live together, Shelley's social activist parents took in Rosie, an abandoned black three-year-old. Rosie grew up as a beloved daughter and sister in a white household. Against the backdrop of racist laws and ever-present threats of violence, Shelley's parents did all they could to provide a safe, happy home for their five children. But when Rosie was sixteen, devastating truths came to light, shattering the family's understanding of the past. In this haunting memoir, Shelley Davidow sifts through the memories of her early life, searching for hope and reconciliation. Shadow Sisters leaves us with a deeper understanding of family love and of how, sometimes, that love is not enough.

Shadow Sisters

A brave, heartrending memoir of family, love and longing in the turbulent era of Apartheid in South Africa. During the terrifying years of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow’s family was a crime. At a time when it was illegal for black and white people to live together, Shelley’s social activist parents took in Rosie, an abandoned black three-year-old. Rosie grew up as a beloved daughter and sister in a white household. Against the backdrop of racist laws and ever-present threats of violence, Shelley’s parents did all they could to provide a safe, happy home for their five children. But when Rosie was sixteen, devastating truths came to light, shattering the family’s understanding of the past. In this haunting memoir, Shelley Davidow sifts through the memories of her early life, searching for hope and reconciliation. Shadow Sisters leaves us with a deeper understanding of family love and of how, sometimes, that love is not enough.

Shelley Davidow

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