STORYCARDS: Prepositions

Reviewer Rebecca Matthews

by Sue Duggleby and Ross Duggleby £34.95 + VAT

Available from Speechmark Publishing Ltd, 8 Oxford Court, St James Road, Brackley NN13 7XY.

ISBN 0 86388 266 8

Everything about Story Cards is attractive and bright. However at �34.95 + VAT it might not seem value for money for the therapist funding their own clinical material. I found the instruction booklet disappointingly reduced in content as the four basic stories outlined and a page of speculated/potential clinical uses were translated into four different languages. However all the children that I used the cards with loved the puppets whether they were 3 years or 9 years old and their difficulties in manipulating the puppets were easily resolved by putting each puppet on a spatula. Being able to photocopy the line drawings was also useful not just to provide home practice but also as a colouring reward.

It was at this point that I began to think about even wider uses for this box of cards and puppets. A strong theme at the RCSLT Conference 2001 was the value of story telling as a therapeutic tool. I had been using the Story Cards really with the children that had receptive or expressive language difficulties focusing solely on prepositions. Now I realised by altering the character names and stories that I could use the materials with those children who had sound difficulties to consolidate those tricky sounds into spontaneous speech. I could use the cards with almost all my caseload - now the Story Cards were not so costly. They had also become a focus to extend my therapeutic skill with storytelling - the cards were no longer in their box but in a bag filled with props to support the original stories which were changing with each telling. Story Cards have the potential to be a really worthwhile purchase but they do require the therapist to use their own imagination to extend their use and realise their full potential. They have provided me with an invaluable start to the art of story telling and I am already looking forward to additional stories from the authors to provide me with further inspiration.

Contents *** (stars are out of a maximum of five)

Readability **

Value ****