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Talking Books with JT Crowley
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British Author JT Crowley is talking books with international authors online and on screen. These video chats will reveal the stories and characters as they are built from the ground up. Join JT and his guests to take the journey of engaging audiences through writing and story-telling.
Words Choose Wisely by Paola Iglesias
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Paola Iglesias
Words Choose Wisely
Paola Iglesias was born in Buenos Aires the capital of Argentina. At the age of six months, she emigrated with her family to Australia for what her parents saw as a better life. Paola currently lives in Sydney with her two children, Oscar sixteen and Emmeline twelve. As a qualified chartered architect, she thoroughly enjoys designing and creating dream homes for people, with her own unique touch of magic. I know this has nothing to do with the book we’re going to talk about, but it gives you a brief insight to Paola herself and what she does professionally, have a look at some of her designs www.houzz.com.au
We all know life very often doesn’t turn out as you originally hoped for and that relationships can stray as well as bloom. You might be forgiven for thinking why I have digressed to talk about relationships, have I become an agony aunt? Well, the answer to that is no, but there is some bearing to relationships souring as to why Paola has written this book. The book encompasses issues of domestic violence, elaborate bullying both non-physical more mental all done through inappropriate choice of words, words spoken derogatively to undermine, belittle, to such an extent the person on the receiving end feels utterly valueless, demeaned, resulting in dreams shattered, families ripped apart, and possibly wrong life options taken all due to ill-judged words that over a long period of endurance have devastating effects on the recipient. Words like, unattractive, unintelligent, unwanted, stupid and irrelevant. Why someone chooses to denigrate another, through misplaced adopted words is sad as well as harmful, and I think most of us can think back to our time in school when someone said something hurtful, whether it was said innocently or with malice intent.
Paola herself has experienced a lot of what I have just said and strongly believes that to address this area we need to start by educating our children to think about the choice of
words they say to each other which she hopes will continue into their adulthood and the relationships they enter. So, Paola in collusion with her son Oscar’s illustrations who at the time was thirteen has written this short but simple book aimed at nine to twelve-year-olds to make them think about the words they choose to say to their friends and what affect those words have on their friends. So, ’Words Choose Wisely.’ The book is written in English, Spanish and French so large sways of the world’s youth can read the book and think about the illustrations.
The book can be obtained from the Amazon link below or alternatively from her publishers www.balboapress.com.au search bookstore Paola Iglesias. The book is available in Softcover as well as Ebook.
Enjoy this simple but effective book, all about the choice of words we use to talk to each other, be as children who the booked is directed at or as so-called adults. Let’s remember words can be amazing but equally they can be harmful when taken out of context.
Thank you, Paula, Oscar and Emmeline, for this wonderful book.
I was born on a warm summer’s evening to Irish immigrants. My father was born in Ireland under British rule, he kept British citizenship, which allowed him to join the British Royal Air Force and follow a career in aero engineering at Rolls Royce in Derby. My mother was actually born in Manhattan New York but after the tragic death of her father when she was just seven months old led her mother eventually having remarried several years later to return to Ireland, it was there on the wild west coastline my mother spent much of her childhood.
In August 1957 my parents married and settled in Derby where my brother and I along with our late sister grew up. On reflection we weren’t particularly financially well off but there again nor where the kids that we grew up with, so we were non the wiser. However my parents instilled in us to respect others and to do things with our lives that they weren’t able to do.
When I was at school I excelled in Geography looking at all the different places in the world. So I suppose it was that geographical background coupled with wanting to achieve things that my parents weren’t able to do so, that set me on my worldly travels.
The excitement of travel coupled with the allure of seeing different cultures especially the many facets of kid’s lives in those places in contrast to my own narrow childhood inspired me to write the book. I want kids to see beyond their own streets and their smartphones and I hope that when they’ve read the book they will start to see that different kids from dissimilar places in the world live and experience contrasting lives and some of those lifestyles can be defined as harsh. But above all I hope it inspires some of my young readers to follow in my footsteps and witness life in all its forms.
The one thing that I’ve learnt in life is that theory in itself is fine but putting that theory into a practical form like a book is somewhat different. I suppose what I’m trying to say here is having an idea for a book and actually writing it and promoting it to the public is a far cry from the initial notion. So what made me take the leap from the first mental pictures to transferring them to words on a page that kids and adults alike can read any where in the world, well that hawks back to my parents encouragement wanting me to achieve things they couldn’t.
As a child writing never came easy to me, and when I look back at some of the letters I wrote to my parents from boarding school I can only hang my head in shame. I suppose being a boy more interested with what was going on in the school playground rather than the classroom would lead my mother who was by then an English teacher to tearing her hair out, the look of despondency written on her face as she tried to get me to read a single page of a book only to hear me begrudgingly recite a page in front of her and asking having got to the end of the page, ”can I go now.” Little did I know then that not having the ability to read and write properly would set me back in life, something I later rectified. So kids you can change but go and see the world in all its beauty, and don’t forget respect all nations.