Books published by publisher William Forde

‘Douglas the Dragon’ negotiates the life stages of being orphaned, adopted, accepted, loved, rejected, feared, outcast, reformed and then made redundant. In this final story, he leaves his beloved village and past to seek a new way of life, and finds an angry female dragon whom he eventually changes with his love. He returns to his beloved village, marries her and starts a family of baby dragons.By 1971, I had founded the process upon which all ‘Anger Management’ groups would thereafter follow and freely gave this knowledge to the world. Within the space of two years, ‘Anger Management’ (a phrase that I coined), had mushroomed across the English speaking world. After 25 years of researching and specialising in Anger Management, Relaxation Training, Behaviour Modification and Stress Management, I started writing children’s books. My primary purpose of writing for children was to convey to them through my books, the basic principles of ‘Anger Management.’The expression of ‘Anger’ by a child is a natural and healthy process that ought not to be discouraged by adults. When a child expresses anger, the adult is alerted to the fact that something is wrong, but the repression (non-expression) of anger by a child conceals personal hurt and a degree of emotional disturbance, which could lead to them feeling ‘unloved.’The most popular of all my children’s books have been the four stories of ‘Douglas the Dragon.’ These stories have been publicly read in thousands of Yorkshire Schools between 1990 and 2005.Numerous teachers have used them to help children come to terms with the emotional upset that moving house, changing schools, being separated from part of one’s family, bereavement of loved ones or being excluded from community activities can produce. Child Psychologists, Educational Welfare Officers and Trauma Therapists also used the stories to help abused children express their righteous anger, thereby enabling the progression of their emotional development through the facilitation of healthy expression.The central themes of the ‘Douglas the Dragon’ stories evolve around the issues of Anger, Fear, Love, Separation, Bereavement, Second Chances, the Effect of Exclusion and the unwelcome experience that Sudden Change can often produce. Indeed, the late Princess Diana once phoned me when Princes William and Harry were aged around 9 years and 7 years, and asked that I send her a copy of ‘Douglas the Dragon’ along with a copy of ‘Sleezy the Fox’ so that she may read them to her children at bedtime. There is a two-headed dragon that lives in the heart of every man, woman and child; a ‘Dragon of Anger’ and a ‘Dragon of Love.’ Both dragons compete for the control of our thoughts, feelings and actions, but only one of them can be victorious. The ‘Dragon of Anger’ will destroy you unless you evict it from your body in the form of healthy expression. We cannot get the ‘Dragon of Anger’ out of our bodies until we allow in the ‘Dragon of Love.’The ability to express the ‘Dragon of Love’ through our thoughts, words and deeds will lead us on to increased self-acceptance, greater happiness, improved health and personal freedom; bringing us closer to our true selves, our families, our friends, our neighbours and our God.

Gilbert Grim, the village bully and sheep rustler, is released from prison and faces life as an ex-con. He is evicted by his old neighbours and decides to steal to survive. Farmer Hans tracks him down and 'reforms' Gilbert.As a growing child, the one thing that I experienced in abundance was ‘second chances.’ In fact, I’d go as far as to say that without having had my fair share of second chances, my life would have taken a much different course. Second chances were my life saver!Not surprisingly, one of my favourite books was Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misērables,’ a story that was chiefly responsible for transforming me from ‘Thief’ to that of ‘Probation Officer’ in later life. I was also fascinated by the bible story of Christ telling His followers to ‘turn the other cheek’ in circumstances where it seemed more natural to ‘strike back.’ I eventually came to understand that the instruction of Christ to turn the other cheek wasn’t so that the offender might strike you once more, but to afford him/her ‘a second chance’ not to strike you again.Wherever the fault lies, whatever the character trait requiring changing happens to be or however the behaviour needs improvement, being provided with ‘a second chance’ is essential to one’s overall sense of well being. It may be that losing weight is what is required to getting a second chance at life or giving up smoking or abstaining from alcohol or drugs. One may need to address one’s inappropriate behaviour of aggression, distrust, bullying, dishonesty, name calling or anything which adversely affects one’s life and image. Whatever the unhappy state of being, ‘a second chance’ may be what one requires to either give or receive.‘Sleezy the Fox’ is a book of four stories about the overarching theme of ‘second chances’. On the surface it deals with the immigration of a married couple and their seven children into a strange country, the bullying of neighbours, the ostracizing of offenders from the community as a whole and the alienation that often exists between man and wild beast and beast and wild man!Each of us shall experience or perpetrate some wrong in our lives. At the critical stage of reconciliation and healing, it is vitally important that we are able to give others and ourselves the benefit of a ‘second chance’. And if you are like I used to be growing up, you may need to receive a ‘second chance’ many times before you eventually get it right.

WINNER OF READERS FAVORITE SCI-Fi FANTASY CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD 2019With Timothy Mean’s amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible!Join Timothy on a magical rhyming adventure as he skips through time and pranks with pirates, gets daring with dragons, and even teases a T-Rex!“It’s Monday. Hip hip hooray! Where shall we travel in time today?With Timothy Mean, every day is a rhyme in time!

WINNER OF READERS FAVORITE SCI-Fi FANTASY CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD 2019With Timothy Mean's amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible! Join Timothy on a magical rhyming adventure as he skips through time and pranks with pirates, gets daring with dragons, and even teases a T-Rex!"It's Monday. Hip hip hooray! Where shall we travel in time today?With Timothy Mean, every day is a rhyme in time!

WINNER OF READERS FAVORITE SCI-Fi FANTASY CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD 2019With Timothy Mean's amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible!Join Timothy on a magical rhyming adventure as he skips through time and pranks with pirates, gets daring with dragons, and even teases a T-Rex!"It's Monday. Hip hip hooray! Where shall we travel in time today? With Timothy Mean, every day is a rhyme in time!

With Timothy Mean’s amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible!Join Timothy and sister Lucy on a new magical rhyming adventure in this sequel to the award winning 'Timothy Mean and the Time Machine' children's picture book. Mummies, Gladiators, Cavemen, Albert Einstein, Giant Squids, Leonardo Da Vinci and Aliens make an appearance in this exciting, laugh out loud, time travel escapade.

‘Greed’ contains two stories: one set in the days of ‘The Californian Gold Rush’ and the other in Wigan during the 1950’s. Both stories illustrate the triumph of the good person over that of the greedy one who seeks to get what want through thieving, cheating, lying and bullying. The stories have a thief, cheat, liar and bully and an honest person as characters whose lives impact on each other. In ‘Four Crude Dudes and the Land of Hope’, the story is set in the days of the Californian Gold Rush. It tells how the lives of five characters who are strangers, impact upon the lives of each other and how the thief, cheat, liar and bully get their comeuppance and how the honest and God-fearing farmer of selfless disposition is rewarded.The story is set against the backcloth of a mining town in California and it provides a good taste of what the prospectors of the time would have experienced as they strove to strike it rich.In the second story of ‘Two Crude Dames and Horace Catchpole’, the setting is in Wigan during the 1950’s. It tells of the life of Horace, a wimpish and downtrodden man who endures a life of cruelty, humiliation and bullying at the hands of two monstrous women; first his mother and then his wife, whom his mother sells him in marriage to for the princely sum of £1,000. Horace’s life becomes more and more unbearable, especially when all three start living together in order that the two greedy women can save money on housekeeping by pooling their resources. Eventually, our hapless hero has had enough and he starts to assert himself. The worm eventually turns and the two monstrous women get their comeuppance. Both stories are suitable as a ‘cross-over’ book and can be enjoyed by any reader between the ages of 9 and 90 years of age.

The worlds of 12-year-old Axel Tyler and 73-year-old Brigadier Butterworth couldn’t possibly be farther apart. While one is content to live life to the full in the fast track of 1990’s Britain, the other yearns for the day when the country regains its senses and returns to those pre-war values that made Britain ‘Great’.When events conspire to bring the 12-year-old rebel and the madcap Brigadier face-to-face, conflict becomes inevitable as the irreconcilable values and beliefs of two widely different worlds collide.The war between the two combatants is fought within a privatised, concentration camp, which is situated deep in the heart of Arundel Forest. Who will win the hearts and minds of the 59 teenage-rebel prisoners who have all been expelled from their schools and imprisoned in Arundel Forest: Axel or the Brigadier? At stake is nothing less than the future of Great Britain and the values of its young.‘Butterworth’s Brigade’ was described at the time of its initial publication as being a book of the 90s that will be remembered in years to come for the issues it raises and the questions it posed. The issues in respect of Britain’s membership of the ‘Common Market’ and the ‘European Union’ remain as poignant and as relevant today as they were when I first wrote about them twenty years ago. Indeed, ‘Butterworth’s Brigade’ ends with the Brigadier warning of the dangers yet to be dealt with over the unresolved European issue. ‘Butterworth’s Brigade’ is a thought-provoking story that was written primarily in commemoration of ‘D-Day’ and all those Second World War soldiers who died on the beaches of Normandy. It pleases me immensely to republish this story in E-book format during the one hundred years’ anniversary of the ‘First World War.’

It is only in more recent years that the possibility of flight and cheaper travel has made foreign holidays more accessible to the average family. No longer is it so unusual to travel to Europe and even countries farther afield. When I was a child though, almost everyone who went on a yearly holiday went to the seaside for a week. The wealthier families may have travelled there first class, remained longer and may have stayed in swankier hotels and guesthouses than those poorer families, but whatever their accommodation, duration of stay or means of transport, it was undoubtedly to the seaside where they all went! Rich or poor, the children occupied their time paddling in the sea, building sandcastles with their buckets and spades, riding donkeys, flying kites and eating ice-cream cornets. This was Annie’s holiday experience. Has it been yours yet?A reason for writing the ‘Action Annie’ stories was to correct an imbalance which had appeared to have developed between girls and boys; and in particular, the differing stereotypes. When one looked at ‘roles’ and ‘the type of behaviour’ that might be ‘expected’ from a boy, but which was wholly ‘never expected’ or considered ‘acceptable’ from a girl; the discrimination practised was more subtle: such as shouting, swearing, fighting, picking one’s nose and even making rude noises in public! In short; ‘Action Annie’ represented ‘girl power’ in action and was my humble attempt of redressing the perceptual balance.Annie is an imaginative and very active seven-year-old whose mind and body is always on the move. She never seems to stop. Even as she sleeps, she is dreaming about the things she plans to do tomorrow. Annie is always thinking up new ideas and inventing things. Once she gets an idea inside her head, she becomes determined to try it out. If her ideas don't work out the first time Annie tries them out, she will try and try again. Once Annie has decided to do something, nobody and nothing will stop her.Annie's head is crammed with ideas and her body is filled with feelings, feelings which she finds impossible to hide from the outside world. Anyone can tell whether Annie is feeling happy or sad by simply looking at her and by listening to what she says, because she just can’t hide her feelings.When Annie is happy, her smiley face tells you so and when she is sad, the smile on her face will quickly disappear and be replaced by a squashed-tomato look. When Annie is ‘very happy', the smile on her face widens, her two arms begin to rotate like the propellers of an aircraft, her two feet jump her body up into the air and her mouth gleefully yells out, "Yippee! Yippee! Yippee! Yippee for Annie!" But when she’s ‘very angry’, she rotates her arms, jumps in the air and lands saying, “Bother! Bother! Bother! And Double Bother!”*When Annie gets angry she knows how to get the anger out of her. When Annie wants to get the anger out of her body, she writes it out, she talks it out and she acts it out. If she is angry with someone, she may write them a nasty letter and then tear it up without posting it. When she does this, she finds that expressing her feelings makes her feel a bit better. Whenever Annie becomes annoyed with another person she goes into a corner where she won’t be heard and calls the person a ‘Jolly old stinker!’ If she is very angry, she will go to her bedroom and pretend that the other person is her pillow. Then she will have a pillow fight, expressing her angry feelings to the pillow she is punching. Or she may lie on her back on the bed and peddle her legs up in the air furiously until she is physically exhausted and all the anger has left her body.*The author of these stories ‘founded’ Anger Management Programmes in Great Britain in 1971 and freely gave them to the world. Within a few years, they had mushroomed across the English- speaking world and have helped millions of people since.

With Timothy Mean's amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible!Join Timothy and sister Lucy on a new magical rhyming adventure in this sequel to the award winning 'Timothy Mean and the Time Machine' children's picture book.Mummies, Gladiators, Cavemen, Albert Einstein, Giant Squids, Leonardo Da Vinci and Aliens make an appearance in this exciting, laugh out loud, time travel escapade.

Annie is playing her violin one summer’s day in her garden when a bullfrog hops over her wall in search of water. The bullfrog makes a big mess in her house and garden. Annie becomes determined to catch this slippery creature that has the ability to jump over her head and make her look a fool as she chases it around and around. Find out if Annie is able to catch the bullfrog. Could you?Another reason for writing the ‘Action Annie’ stories was to correct an imbalance which had appeared to have developed between girls and boys; and in particular, the differing stereotypes. When one looked at ‘roles’ and ‘the type of behaviour’ that might be ‘expected’ from a boy, but which was wholly ‘never expected’ or considered ‘acceptable’ from a girl; the discrimination practised was more subtle: such as shouting, swearing, fighting, picking one’s nose and even making rude noises in public! In short; ‘Action Annie’ represented ‘girl power’ in action and was my humble attempt of redressing the perceptual balance.Annie is an imaginative and very active seven-year-old whose mind and body is always on the move. She never seems to stop. Even as she sleeps, she is dreaming about the things she plans to do tomorrow. Annie is always thinking up new ideas and inventing things. Once she gets an idea inside her head, she becomes determined to try it out. If her ideas don't work out the first time Annie tries them out, she will try and try again. Once Annie has decided to do something, nobody and nothing will stop her.Annie's head is crammed with ideas and her body is filled with feelings, feelings which she finds impossible to hide from the outside world. Anyone can tell whether Annie is feeling happy or sad by simply looking at her and by listening to what she says, because she just can’t hide her feelings.When Annie is happy, her smiley face tells you so and when she is sad, the smile on her face will quickly disappear and be replaced by a squashed-tomato look. When Annie is ‘very happy', the smile on her face widens, her two arms begin to rotate like the propellers of an aircraft, her two feet jump her body up into the air and her mouth gleefully yells out, "Yippee! Yippee! Yippee! Yippee for Annie!" But when she’s ‘very angry’, she rotates her arms, jumps in the air and lands saying, “Bother! Bother! Bother! And Double Bother!”*When Annie gets angry she knows how to get the anger out of her. When Annie wants to get the anger out of her body, she writes it out, she talks it out and she acts it out. If she is angry with someone, she may write them a nasty letter and then tear it up without posting it. When she does this, she finds that expressing her feelings makes her feel a bit better. Whenever Annie becomes annoyed with another person she goes into a corner where she won’t be heard and calls the person a ‘Jolly old stinker!’ If she is very angry, she will go to her bedroom and pretend that the other person is her pillow. Then she will have a pillow fight, expressing her angry feelings to the pillow she is punching. Or she may lie on her back on the bed and peddle her legs up in the air furiously until she is physically exhausted and all the anger has left her body.*The author of these stories ‘founded’ Anger Management Programmes in Great Britain in 1971 and freely gave them to the world. Within a few years, they had mushroomed across the English- speaking world and have helped millions of people since. Included within the asterisked paragraph above are some ‘easy to understand’ and ‘simple to follow’ instructions for helping to manage anger in a young child. There is a little bit of Annie in every girl and boy. That is what makes her so likable. Are you like Annie in any of her ways?