Whispering Shadows: Think Clearly & Claim Your Personal Power

Whispering Shadows is the worktext that accompanies Clear Thinking. The program personifies self-defeating beliefs and distortions as Whispering Shadows,charicatures of such problems as anger (the Mad Man), jealousy (Envy Eyes), blaming (the Whoo Mee Kids), and depression (the Prophet of Doom). Star Thinkers and Clear Thinkers talk back to the Shadows, modeling the optimistic, realistic self-talk that students must learn to banish them. Appealing, culturally diverse drawings illustrate cognitive/affective self-control techniques for real-life issues. Even poor readers and immature thinkers can become their own personal scietists, using their brains to build personal power and improve their lives.

Polly Nichols and Martha Shaw, mother and daughter, shared a deep concern for young people and more than 30 years experience as special educators when they chose to combine their talents as writer and illustrator. Dr. Nichols, a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop for fiction as well as of its College of Education, used these skills to create the imaginative, therapeutic story-telling format of Whispering Shadows. Martha Shaw created the drawings that illustrate the concepts and make them appealing and accessible to young people. She has also served as an award-winning special education teacher in classrooms for students with autism, behavior problems,learning and developmental delays. Her experiences with more able autistic students and as a consultant to adolescent group homes contributed to the succesful translation of Rational Emotive Therapy and Cognitive Therapy concepts into new words and images that are meaningul to young thinkers.