Radical Ray

I'm Bobbi Chegwyn, an Australian author living in Ohio, and the creator of the Radical Ray children's book series and the Ready, Ray, Go! weekly SEL activity series you'll find in this store. More than twenty years of studying human behaviour and a few years of driving a school bus full of children in my local community are woven into every activity I create. Both experiences taught me the same thing: children who feel deeply need stories and spaces that take those feelings seriously. Radical Love is the philosophy at the heart of this work: the idea that love is not something you feel so much as something you do. Every Ready, Ray, Go! lesson gives children a concrete, low-prep experience of that idea in action, built around Ray Roxby, an eight-year-old boy from Botany, Sydney, who notices the things most people walk straight past. The series is free, 36 weeks long, and aligned to the CASEL framework across all five competencies. It is designed for teachers and school counselors working with Grades 2 to 7, particularly students who feel deeply, who struggle with belonging, or who simply need to see themselves in a story before they can trust the classroom. Find all four Radical Ray books on Amazon and new free activities every week at meetradicalray.com.

The teaching philosophy behind every Ready, Ray, Go! activity comes from a single observation: children do not learn emotional skills from being told about them. They learn from being placed inside an experience that creates genuine feeling rather than just describing it. Every lesson in this series is built around a moment most children already know: a student sitting alone on a playground, a kind thing someone did that they still remember, a feeling they have never had a name for until now. Ray's world is the entry point, and the classroom becomes the place where children discover that what Ray experiences is not so different from what they carry into school each day. The activities are designed for the teacher's pace, with no word-for-word script and no outcome to tick off. Discussion questions stay open because the most important conversations in a classroom rarely have a single right answer. The goal is a room where every child feels counted, and every teacher feels equipped to make that happen, one week at a time.

The Radical Ray series has received five-star recognition from Readers' Favorite across three published titles. Reviewer Asher Syed described Book 1 as "an extraordinary celebration of the power of everyday kindness," noting that the storytelling approaches inclusiveness in ways that feel authentic for all readers, and that every chapter reinforces the importance of noticing, supporting, and celebrating one another. Reviewer Carol Thompson praised A Father's Return for its universal themes of forgiveness and self-discovery and the discussion prompts that extend the reading into meaningful reflection. Of No Greater Love, Thompson drew a comparison to Jacqueline Woodson for the series' intimate emotional storytelling, calling it "an excellent choice for older children who have experienced loss." Melissa Kappes, M.A., M.Ed., LPCC-S, Co-owner of The Counseling Professionals, brings more than thirty years of therapeutic practice to her endorsement of the series. Of No Greater Love specifically, she writes that it "creates hope and allows for emotional processing," and considers it one of the best resources available for helping families support children through grief. The series is also endorsed by Kathryne Imabayashi, M.Ed., B.S.Ed., Parents of Boys Coach and Author.

My background in human behaviour is grounded in formal coaching and training qualifications completed through two of Australia's leading institutions. Through The Coaching Institute (2008), I hold qualifications in Life Coaching, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Performance Coaching, Time Line Therapy, and Advanced Coach Mastery, each focused on understanding how people think, process emotion, and create lasting change. I am also a certified Trainer and Assessor through TAFE NSW (2010), part of Australia's national vocational education system, which qualifies me to design and deliver training programmes for adult learners. Together, these credentials underpin more than twenty years of working with human behaviour, first in coaching practice and later in the research, observation, and storytelling that became the Radical Ray series and the Ready, Ray, Go! classroom activities.

Before writing Radical Ray, Bobbi spent years working with adults as a coach, helping people navigate the beliefs they could not shake, the feelings they had never had words for, and the patterns that had followed them through decades of their lives. The observation that kept returning was the same: the things people struggled with as adults almost always had their roots somewhere much earlier, in the years when those patterns were still forming, at the age when what a child believes about themselves is still open enough to shift. After moving from Australia to the United States in 2018, Bobbi spent time driving an elementary school bus in Ohio. What began as a way to become part of her new community soon became something far more meaningful. Every morning and afternoon she watched children climb aboard carrying the small victories, worries, friendships, disappointments, and questions that make up childhood. She saw children learning who they were in real time. She watched confidence grow, kindness spread, misunderstandings take hold, and beliefs about themselves begin to form. What struck her most was how familiar it all felt. The fears, insecurities, assumptions, and emotional struggles she had spent years helping adults work through were often visible in their earliest stages right there on the bus. The difference was that these children were still writing the story. Their beliefs were not yet fixed. Their understanding of themselves was still taking shape. That realisation became the foundation of the Radical Ray series. Children between seven and twelve hold something rare: a window of openness that begins to narrow as adolescence approaches, before the emotional stakes feel higher and before beliefs about who they are start to settle into something harder to reach. A child who arrives at their teenage years already knowing how to name what they feel, sit with difficulty, question their assumptions, and choose kindness carries something that can serve them for the rest of their life. The Radical Ray books were created to meet children in that window. Book 4, No Greater Love, holds the most personal part of Bobbi's story. She lost her mother at sixteen, suddenly and without warning, and grief arrived before she had any real tools to hold it. The book was written because she believes children navigating loss deserve something honest: not a story that rushes toward comfort, but one that simply stays beside them in the reality of what they are feeling. The Radical Ray series is for every child navigating the real, complicated, sometimes heartbreaking parts of growing up, and for every parent, teacher, counsellor, and caring adult walking beside them. Through stories filled with warmth, humour, and emotional truth, Bobbi hopes to help children understand one simple but powerful idea: who they become is not determined by what happens to them, but by what they learn to believe about themselves along the way.