Please, please, give this excerpt from the book a try! Just read a little bit right here, and then I'll tell you the reason why I am forever endeared to this book!!

Poor Kaka drooped. The uplifted claw fell to his side, and the yellow crest flattened.

"The truth is," he said sadly, "it isn't the journey or anything like that. The fact is that I just can't sing, no matter how hard I try, not a note. Not even half a note. None of us can, not since the Dream-time. Of course, it was all our own fault -- no-one to blame but ourselves."

"Whatever do you mean, Kaka?" I asked. "What was the Dream-time and why can't you sing?"

Kaka looked at me in astonishment, his beak gaping wide. For a moment it seemed that everything in the garden and the bush beyond was shocked into silence.

The cockatoo looked about him cautiously, and said in a hushed voice: "Surely you know that the Dream-time was the very beginning of everything! I thought, even you, would know that."

"I'm sorry. I have never heard of it," I said. "Please tell me about it."

Kaka peered into the basket, saw he had missed a few peas, so carefully scooped them out. "Well if you don't know, it's about time you did," he said. "I'll tell you, but don't interrupt."

The Dream-time was the very beginning of everything, so long ago, that only the very wisest of the birds and creatures can guess, and it was then that the Great Bunyip called his tribe together and said:

"It is time for me to make the world. and you, my tribesmen, shall be my helpers."

"What first do you wish us to do, old Great One?"

"Make first the sea," the Great Bunyip answered.

One evening after Leigh had sent this book to our children, I was reading aloud to Michelle, Ashley, and an overnight guest of Michelle's named Kathryn. It was a very light and casual time; nothing out of the ordinary, unless you consider the entire event out of the ordinary. Which, now that I think of it, was! :-) I was reading the chapter entitled The Unhappy Platypus. Bear with me as I tell the story briefly so you'll understand the great surprise!!!

The Great Bunyip picked up a ball of clay to create another creature but the little ball couldn't decide if it wanted to be a bird or a duck, to be furry like a koala, to swim underwater like a fish or to live in a warm burrow like a wombat. When the little ball of clay couldn't come to a decision, the Great One created a platypus.

She had a terrible time as a platypus as she didn't like worms and she couldn't swim and worst of all she got a terrible cold. If you will humour me with one more short passage from the book, I promise I'll get to the point.

"I hade being a platypus!" hiccuped Chidna, and trying to press the water out of her coat with her paws, she crawled back into the burrow. She was wet, she was miserable, and soon she found that she had developed a cold.

"I hade being a pladypus," she snuffled. "I hade this life! Sniff! Sniff! I hade gedding up early in the mording and goiwig out again whed id's nearly dark! I loathe shrimps and worms, and above all, I HADE water! ... I think I'll run away!"

Run away she did and she ended up in the Great Bunyip's mixing bowl of clay! As I was reading the story to the girls about the changes occurring to the platypus, at the very same time the girls and I looked down at the shirt Michelle was wearing ... the shirt given to her a day earlier by Leigh ... and there on her shirt was ... ECHIDNA!! The very creature that platypus was transforming into ... was the very creature on the t-shirt that Leigh had given her as a gift!! We all realized it at the same time and screamed with delight!! Ashley ran to get her t-shirt, as hers was platypus!!

You want to see girls giggling???!!! All of us were rolling on the floor as the story fell into place with the gifts we'd received! It was ... perfect!!!

It's the fun that comes tumbling out all over the place unexpectedly from everything he touches! And this wasn't a unique or isolated experience! It's one of many that have come our way since we met Leigh!

He has a gift for Colour & Oomph.

And I am so lucky that he shares it with me.