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Tell Me a Tale: A Book about Storytelling
Young readers can learn about the importance of storytelling and the meanings that stories have carried throughout time in an exciting collection of tales from around the world, accompanied by more than thirty activities for beginning storytellers.
- GenresWriting
144 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 1997
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73 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Bruchac
279 books597 followersJoseph Bruchac lives with his wife, Carol, in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.
He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic, Parabola and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than 70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepers of the Earth (co-authored with Michael Caduto), Tell Me a Tale, When the Chenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman's Store and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over the Door and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea (Harcourt), an historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee & Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up The Sky (Dial), a collection of plays for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.
He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio. His work as a educator includes eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. With his wife, Carol, he is the founder and Co-Director of the Greenfield Review Literary Center and The Greenfield Review Press. He has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Cricket and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic, Parabola and Smithsonian Magazine. He has authored more than 70 books for adults and children, including The First Strawberries, Keepers of the Earth (co-authored with Michael Caduto), Tell Me a Tale, When the Chenoo Howls (co-authored with his son, James), his autobiography Bowman's Store and such novels as Dawn Land, The Waters Between, Arrow Over the Door and The Heart of a Chief. Forthcoming titles include Squanto's Journey (Harcourt), a picture book, Sacajawea (Harcourt), an historical novel, Crazy Horse's Vision (Lee & Low), a picture book, and Pushing Up The Sky (Dial), a collection of plays for children. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee Nation Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and both the 1998 Writer of the Year Award and the 1998 Storyteller of the Year Award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 1999, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
As a professional teller of the traditional tales of the Adirondacks and the Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Joe Bruchac has performed widely in Europe and throughout the United States from Florida to Hawaii and has been featured at such events as the British Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. He has been a storyteller-in-residence for Native American organizations and schools throughout the continent, including the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and the Onondaga Nation School. He discusses Native culture and his books and does storytelling programs at dozens of elementary and secondary schools each year as a visiting author.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 14, 2011
Storytelling is a really wonderful art and I know I love to hear a good story.
In this book, Joseph Bruchac tells different steps and activities to improve your storytelling. He also tells the most important things of storytelling - Listen, Observe, Remember and Share.
Stories, I believe, are a important part of life. They can help us to learn and grow as a person - through stories, we can find out so much about ourselves.
In my own way, I am a bit of a storyteller, but in a different way. I write and I love doing that. Writing is what I want to do with my life and I believe I have many good stories to share with the world. But I also appreciate oral storytelling. There is just something about hearing a story. It's special, much in the way reading a good book is.
There are also a number of good and memorable stories Joseph Bruchac tells in this book - I know I will remember many of them. I enjoyed the stories in the book and feel they have become a part of me now.
Truly, this is a wonderful book about storytelling. I recommend it to anyone who wants to become a storyteller, or anyone who is a writer like myself.
In this book, Joseph Bruchac tells different steps and activities to improve your storytelling. He also tells the most important things of storytelling - Listen, Observe, Remember and Share.
Stories, I believe, are a important part of life. They can help us to learn and grow as a person - through stories, we can find out so much about ourselves.
In my own way, I am a bit of a storyteller, but in a different way. I write and I love doing that. Writing is what I want to do with my life and I believe I have many good stories to share with the world. But I also appreciate oral storytelling. There is just something about hearing a story. It's special, much in the way reading a good book is.
There are also a number of good and memorable stories Joseph Bruchac tells in this book - I know I will remember many of them. I enjoyed the stories in the book and feel they have become a part of me now.
Truly, this is a wonderful book about storytelling. I recommend it to anyone who wants to become a storyteller, or anyone who is a writer like myself.
June 26, 2017
Human beings are, by nature, storytellers. We tell stories every day, and we all have personal stories about our names, family history, hometown, cultural heritage, etc. Stories are all around us! This is a wonderful, empowering introduction authored by a master storyteller for anyone wishing to tell stories. The volume includes a selection of traditional tales to tell. Drawing on his diverse experiences as a storyteller, Bruchac discusses the use of storytelling for healing and therapeutic purposes. He also touches upon the ethics of storytelling, such as requesting permission and attribution of stories to specific storytellers. The book is written in spare language that is accessible to both children and adults. A highly recommended book for all storytellers!
April 12, 2012
Pgs 1 - 25: Just started this but am really enjoying it. The author really emphasizes the importance of listening to as well as telling stories, all the different sources of stories from family history to cultural to personal and more.
26 - 56: I like that each chapter ends w/ a list of activities and the examples of the different types of stories (folklore, religious stories, etc.) are interesting.
57 - 85: Still enjoying the book and the stories the author tells, as well as how they can help children and adults make sense of their world and experiences. However, I feel like the author puts Native American cultures on a pedestal as if they have it all figured out and have reached some kind of cultural enlightenment through their indigenous religions and story-telling culture. This statement on pg. 71 really irritated me: "I think one of the great problems we face in the world today is that we no longer understand how to transform our anger and heal our pain." If he had replaced "no longer" w/ "don't" I would have been fine w/ that sentence. That implies that there was once a culture in which every person did know how to do what he's talking about which I think is BS. I don't disagree that telling stories and listening to stories can be extremely cathartic and helpful on many different levels for all kinds of people. But those people have to want it and know what to do w/ what they receive. I just think some of his statements are unrealistic and overly nostalgiac.
86 - 118: Really enjoyed the book overall. I especially liked some of the suggestions he had for making sure you have kids' attention before starting the story/lesson like saying "Hey" and they say "Ho" or "Klick" and they say "Klack." And he even had some story examples about the use of those phrases. Another neat idea he mentioned was a story bag where each little thing in the bag would represent a different story and a kid would pull it out and you'd do that story. That'd be a neat idea for someone who has a lot of stories in their repetroire.
26 - 56: I like that each chapter ends w/ a list of activities and the examples of the different types of stories (folklore, religious stories, etc.) are interesting.
57 - 85: Still enjoying the book and the stories the author tells, as well as how they can help children and adults make sense of their world and experiences. However, I feel like the author puts Native American cultures on a pedestal as if they have it all figured out and have reached some kind of cultural enlightenment through their indigenous religions and story-telling culture. This statement on pg. 71 really irritated me: "I think one of the great problems we face in the world today is that we no longer understand how to transform our anger and heal our pain." If he had replaced "no longer" w/ "don't" I would have been fine w/ that sentence. That implies that there was once a culture in which every person did know how to do what he's talking about which I think is BS. I don't disagree that telling stories and listening to stories can be extremely cathartic and helpful on many different levels for all kinds of people. But those people have to want it and know what to do w/ what they receive. I just think some of his statements are unrealistic and overly nostalgiac.
86 - 118: Really enjoyed the book overall. I especially liked some of the suggestions he had for making sure you have kids' attention before starting the story/lesson like saying "Hey" and they say "Ho" or "Klick" and they say "Klack." And he even had some story examples about the use of those phrases. Another neat idea he mentioned was a story bag where each little thing in the bag would represent a different story and a kid would pull it out and you'd do that story. That'd be a neat idea for someone who has a lot of stories in their repetroire.
March 8, 2010
I love what storytelling can do, and I believe we need to keep reminding people of the power of telling stories, so I really like Joseph Bruchac's personal approach of exploring ways to make universal stories your own.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews