About the book

For seven years, David Broadbent recorded thousands of conversations with his three daughters and chose a few hundred to reflect a little of that sometimes elusive butterfly we call childhood. A time of wonder, simplicity and, above all, sheer unadulterated fun. If you’ve ever wanted a refreshing glimpse of a time free of spin, welcome to the tell-it-like-it-is world of Holly, Isabella and Amelie. Maybe,

just maybe it’ll rub off on you.

More about the book

The book is the fruit of years of intent listening, as hard as that can sometimes be. After a decade of writing down some of the things his children were saying, David was urged by many of those who were reading these conversations as emails, to “do something with them”. “They were telling me I’d created something appreciably bigger than the simple chronicling of my three daughters’ lives,” David says. “They were saying they were once again able to revisit their own childhoods.”

“I suppose I’ve always found my children’s imaginations irresistible. Being free from all the conditioning I’ve had and being unhampered by all the pruning my mind has undergone since puberty, I think what I love about them is their candidness. I think they’re still incapable of speaking, for instance, in euphemisms. With the exception of an occasional fib to escape my wrath, they’ve always told me exactly what they were thinking.” 

“This book has been both my creative outlet and, in a sense, my way back to my own childhood. Indeed, reading back over what has survived has been such a delightful experience that I’ve fallen in love all over again with the springtime of life. I hope, then, that these conversations can be one way to reacquaint yourself with your own childhood. If it was a pleasant one, that is.”

About the author

David lives with his partner, Karin, and their three daughters in a house in Perth, Western Australia, that will, he constantly assures Karin, have a new coat of paint one day. Just as soon as his children grow up and he no longer has anything to write about. While this is David’s first book of conversations, he’s not been resting on his laurels. He’s already amassing more conversations with the girls. There’s one (Signs, signs everywhere) on the Media page as well as plenty on Newsletters.

• 389 Conversations With My Three Kids

• 256 pages, 37 illustrations, soft cello glaze cover 

• Printed in Australia on non-chlorine bleached 100% recycled paper

• Now available for free plus packing+postage.

• One price of $16.50 for up to 4 copies, no extra charge on postage.

The book as a digital read

If you want to read the book on screen, it is available as a pdf, which you can download and read offline. Just click the book cover.

Newsletters

The conversations have kept flowing since 2008. David has continued to record them and we’ve been putting them in a newsletter, which we sent free to subscribers. There are 58 of them. To view any newsletter in pdf form, go to Newsletters.

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New book in planning

A new book covering the years 2009-2017 is currently in the planning stage. It will cover a different period of childhood, the second half, if you will. It will be available in hard copy and digital form. We’ll let you know when, but these things take time. There are a lot of conversations to mull over!

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Media

View sightings of the book in the media as well as links and resources we think are worth a look. Check out some interviews David did with the ABC.

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES LUSH

David was interviewed by ABC720 Perth’s James Lush on Breakfast on Saturday February 26, 2011.

”Out of the mouths of babes . . . We've all heard kids coming out with hilarious comments, in fact David Broadbent heard so many from his three kids that he filled a book! It was a hilarious chat with David on 720 Saturday Breakfast this morning.” 

— Tamara Binama

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES VALENTINE

David was interviewed by ABC702 Sydney’s James Valentine on Afternoons on Thursday October 28, 2010.
An extended interview with almost a dozen contributions from listeners to the program, sharing anecdotes from their conversations with their children and grandchildren.

INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD FIDLER

David was interviewed by Richard Fidler on Conversations on ABC Radio on July 13, 2012

A conversation as a cartoon

A cartoon drawn and animated by Holly, featuring voices by the girls from a conversation in the book.

We’d like to hear your stories

We’ve been inspired by one of our readers who wrote down some of the things her kids were saying and then put them in a glass jar and whenever she was feeling a bit down she would reach into the jar and pick one to read. It invariably lifted her spirits.

There are bound to be funny, insightful, profound, charming, endearing things you’ve heard children, yours and/or others, say over the years. Perhaps you’ve written them down or can recall them from memory. We’d like to start a repository of quotes, snippets of conversations or even longer conversations that reflect the way children think about things and the way they see the world. Much like what’s in the book. In fact, use the book as a guide, if you like.

Use the contact form and we’ll start collecting and adding a page to the website devoted to what other kids say.