Reviewed by Robert Rose for Readers' Favorite

In 1973 I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Creative Problem-Solving Institute (CPSI) at the State University of New York in Buffalo. Dr.J.P. Guilford, Professor Emeritus in Psychology at USC, recommended me as the best interpreter and teacher of his theory of the brain. I was there for five days and I learned about the Creative Problem Solving Process, but I met and learned from some of the world’s best minds in many other disciplines. A series of seminars taught me all I needed to know to return home and develop a small classroom model of Esalen - the New Age model of human possibilities.

Alicia Arnold has also learned this process and has applied her understanding of it. She cleverly takes us through a journey in a fairy tale world inhabited by characters from well known nursery rhymes starring from Jack and Jill. J & J are stymied by the PROBLEM of getting up that damn hill and getting a bucket of water down without spilling any water.

Throughout the book, as J&J desperately try to keep from falling or spilling the water, they keep failing, but through their failures and from what each character teaches them, they do not give up, but try different approaches. This is the CPS (a scientific approach) and applied Socratic questioning. Besides the narrative, she has changes of pace in SIDEBARS that explore the meaning and learning of the chapter.

She also has visuals of key ideas in cartoon form that adds another dimension to the process. By tying the learning to familiar nursery rhymes Alicia takes advantage of what the student knows and more easily connects them to what is to be learned.

Teachers and parents could modify this book to fit any age as they learn to think creatively. The CPS process could turn any classroom or home into a creative thinking laboratory. Well done, Alicia.