Bargain Ebook The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, $1.99 TODAY ONLY

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall is on sale TODAY ONLY for $1.99 in ebook format. This isn't quite a folklore book but it's certainly an adjacent topic. I bought this last time it was on sale but unfortunately it still sits in my long TBR list as life keeps distracting me from my passions.

Book description:

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?

Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.

But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

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Storytelling Quote for a Monday

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.

--Terry Tempest Williams

I changed the page on my Women Reading 2015 Calendar today from August to September and the above quote greeted me at the bottom of the page. I was pleased with it and thought I would share with you. Which then made me think that I needed to go ahead and preorder my 2016 calendar. I love The Reading Woman calendars so I chose this one The Reading Woman 2016 Calendar. I mostly use electronic calendars but somehow having a wall calendar helps me visualize the month better. Besides, it adds a little bit of art to my office library.

Dixit: Storytelling Game Bargain Priced Today Only

I wrote about the game, Dixit, in December 2009. Today it is one of the Gold Box deals on Amazon--with several other board games, see Gold Box Deal of the Day 8/17/13: Strategy Games--and I ordered it as soon as I saw it. For $19.99, today only, I am eager to try out this game that appears to be the Balderdash of storytelling. That's 43% off the regular price and by far the best price I've ever seen for a new copy of the game, even a used one.

From my old post:

Dixit by Asmodée Editions is another game I discovered in my browsing this week. It is a storytelling game of sorts developed in France where it won best game of the year in Cannes as well as Games Magazine Awards Best Party Game 2010 Award.

The game is French, obviously, but has descriptions and instructions printed in multiple languages, conveniently one is English. What stands out about this game is how pretty it is. The art by Marie Cardouat is beautiful and features fairy tale imagery in general, not the specific. You can see more images on Board Game Geek. There will also soon be a Dixit 2 available as an expansion pack or stand alone game all its own. It is due out in 2010 from what I understand. When there is an expansion pack, one can assume the game is a bestseller. Just look at Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan games. (2013 Update: There are now SEVERAL expansion packs available).

Here's a description of the game:

Each player at his turn plays the storyteller. He is given a single picture, while the other players get a hand of six pictures. The storyteller says a sentence or a word connected to his picture, then each player chooses one of his pictures to bet upon. All pictures are showed face up, and every player has to bet upon what picture was the storyteller's.

If nobody or everybody finds the correct picture, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer scores 3. Players score 1 point for every vote gotten by their own pic.

The game ends when the deck is empty. The greatest total wins the game.

Fairy Tale Tabs 12/17/2012

It's way past time for me to clear out some tabs:

Read On "The Snow Queen," Part 1 at Spinning Straw into Gold.

Read Why Stories are Important at Something to Read for the Train.

Read The Gingerbread Man at Fairy Tales for Twenty Somethings.

Not fairy tale related, but I definitely relate: The Book Hangover at All About Romance. Actually, I've been craving one of these. Need a book hangover badly. They are purging and I come out feeling refreshed, after I catch up on sleep, like a great vacation was taken without leaving my cozy home.

And, finally, wow, SurLaLune's CafePress site was recommended by Sycorax as a place for gift buying at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Thanks!

Sycorax says, "One of my favourite places to find presents for like-minded people is the Sur La Lune shop. It has products with old illustrations from fairy tales on them. You can look at these by fairy tale (which to my delight includes some of the less well-known ones), by illustrator (they have about twenty) or by product. I was already in love with Arthur Rackham's work, but this place made me discover the gorgeousness of Kay Nielson, Ivan Bilibin and several others."

Once you see a design you like, you can have it placed on just about anything, from tshirts to waterbottles. They also have journals with illustrated covers, as well

Quote About Fairy Tales and Film, A Good One

From The Dark Side of The Fairy Tale by Alexandra Ferguson:

The fairy tale structure is the foundation of storytelling. Most fairy tales are a glimpse into the history of a culture, with each one carrying a hidden moral or message for its reader, or more often, its listener. Fairy tales tell stories of triumph, struggle, love and loss – the now building blocks of modern cinema screenwriting. However, what is even more intriguing is the fairy tale’s love affair with fear and death. Some of the best loved stories which, for example, are now reincarnated as some of the best loved Disney animations, have much darker roots.

The article goes on to to the usual discussion of fairy tale influenced films already out there, nothing much new although the list focuses on the grittier for those who like those. But I really liked this description of fairy tales so I thought I would share...

Therefore it makes sense that there is evidence of contemporary re-imaginings of the fairy tale in many different film stories.

Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs by Willy Claflin

Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs: A Maynard Moose Tale by Willy Claflin and illustrated by James Stimson. I tried to find more images from this book for Youth Art Month, but alas, I didn't find any and I don't own the books themselves. They look like fun and Claflin is winning storyteller awards, but that is the extent of my current information.

Book description from the publisher:

“Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago...” So begins the story of... Rapunzel?... and The Seven, or Eight, or NINE dwarfs?!? Hey, what’s going on here??? Welcome to the slightly off-track world of Maynard Moose and the ancient Mother Moose tales. Willy Claflin channels and translates these tales for our entertainment and enlightenment—or maybe just to confuse us. Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs exemplifies the lesson in many of these stories “...That there ain’t no moral to some stories at all.” Fractured English is translated in the glossary at the front (under a tongue-in-cheek “Parental Warning”). The cast of characters seems oddly familiar, while the plot is ... well, plot is overrated. James Stimson’s delightful digital artwork brilliantly renders the details that add wit and substance to every page.

This is the second book in the Maynard Moose Series by Clayfin. The first was The Uglified Ducky.

Book description from the publisher:

You may think you know the story of the Ugly Duckling, but think again. In the capable hands of his alter ego Maynard Moose, storyteller Willy Claflin takes us on a wacky journey where this Uglified Ducky, a hapless young moose, "blunders away" from his home, is mistaken for a baby duck, and endures endless humiliation as he tries to learn to waddle, quack, swim, and fly. Eventually, he finds his true "fambly," who helps him discover his own beauty. In his fractured English, translated in the glossary at front, Maynard relays a surprisingly tender story that echoes the original tale's theme of the struggle to belong. The Uglified Ducky's quest is playfully but sympathetically interpreted in James Stimson's luminous, droll gouache illustrations.

More releases from Willy Claflin:

 

  

Thoughts on Storytelling

From American linguist explores ancient town by Sonali Shenoy, about storyteller Cathryn Fairlee:

Next on her itinerary is Kancheepuram, where she is attending a village performance of the Mahabharata. “Not many people in the US know much about Hinduism or what an incredible story this epic really is. And when I tell it, I put the names up on a board like the Pandavas or Draupadi, because although the names are foreign, people can follow the story this way,” she explains.

But these adjustments never affect the story itself.

“I always tell people that if you don’t like a story, don’t tell it, but never change the ending.” A case in point?

The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson. In the original version of the 1837 tale, the mermaid dies, far from the happy ending most of us remember courtesy Walt Disney’s movie adaptation. But why not change the ending to make people happy? There is no hesitation in Cathryn’s reply.

“You know if a story has been told for over a hundred years a certain way, it is not right to disrespect it, or the way it was told.”

This lady of the yarn says that it is getting harder to come across stories she has never heard before.

“I remember once when my husband and I were in China, and we were listening to a woman narrate a story in a dialect that I could not understand. After she left, her son began to translate the story and I was so excited because I realised that it was a Chinese version of Beauty and the Beast!”

Lots of food for thought in just a few short paragraphs. The debate over modern storytellers (not writers, but storytellers) changing old tales is a long one. I'm rather neutral on it since I know how much all tales are changed. However, when presenting tales as part of our cultural heritage as Fairlee does, I agree. And don't you want to hear that Chinese Beauty and the Beast?

Some Day Your Witch Will Come by Kay Stone (WSU Press Week)

One of the many highlights of attending the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society last month--besides meeting so many wonderful people and hearing the papers--was perusing the publishers' display tables.  A few of the presses were also generous and offered me review copies of books either there or by mail later.  Wayne State University Press sent me several of the books I was missing from their wonderful Series in Fairy-Tale Studies, essentially finishing out my personal collection since I had purchased some of the titles previously.  Now that I've had a chance to peruse them, I wanted to spend a week highlighting the titles, at least one a day.

Some Day Your Witch Will Come (Fairy-Tale Studies) by Kay Stone is the first book I'm highlighting.


First, the publisher's desciption:

In this enjoyable volume, Kay Stone has selected writings from her scholarly articles and books spanning 1975–2004 that contain reflections on the value of fairy tales as adult literature. The title Some Day Your Witch Will Come twists a Walt Disney lyric to challenge the typical fairy-tale framework and is a nod to Stone’s innovative and sometimes unconventional perspective. As a whole, this collection is a fascinating look at both the evolution of a career and the recent history of fairy-tale scholarship.

The volume is organized in three chronological sections, beginning with Stone’s influential early work on women in fairy tales. The second section explores her developing interest in traditional tales told by contemporary tellers, and the final section focuses on Stone’s more recent comparisons of dreams and folktales as artistic expressions. In addition to challenging the genres of folktales and storytelling, a distinctive feature of this work is the wealth of material from interviews, which bring readers’ responses into conversation with the scholar’s work. A preface by the author, a foreword by series editor Donald Haase, and brief introductions to each piece are also included.

Some Day Your Witch Will Come is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Stone’s writings. As such, it will be informative and entertaining for both general readers and scholars in a variety of fields, including folklore and fairy-tale studies, women’s studies, psychology, cultural studies, and literature.

And here's the table of contents which I always find the most important element (and so often hard to find on the internet):

Foreword by Donald Haase ix
Preface: Approaching the Witch xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction: Some Day Your Witch Will Come 1

I. FAIRY TALES AND WOMEN
1. Things Walt Disney Never Told Us (1975) 13
2. Fairytales for Adults: Walt Disney’s Americanization of the Marchen (1980) 24
3. The Misuses of Enchantment: Controversies on the Significance of Fairy Tales (1985) 36
4. Feminist Approaches to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales (1986) 55
5. Three Transformations of Snow White (1988) 62

II. FAIRY TALES AND STORYTELLING
6. Oral Narration in Contemporary North America (1986) 77
7. Once Upon A Time Today: Grimm Tales for Contemporary Performers (1993) 98
8. Social Identity in Organized Storytelling (1998) 115
9. Burning Brightly: New Light from an Old Tale (1993) 129
10. Difficult Women in Folktales: Two Women, Two Stories (1997) 146
11. The Teller in the Tale (1998) 171
12. Old Tales, New Contexts (1998) 207
13. Fire and Water: A Journey into the Heart of a Story (2004) 232

III. FAIRY TALES AND DREAMS
14. In My Mother’s Garden (2004) 251
15. The Golden Woman: A Dream and a Story (2004) 265
16. Follow Your Frog (2004) 277
17. Some Day Your Witch Might Come (2004) 289

Epilogue 307
Notes 313
Works Cited 321
Permissions Acknowledgements 331
Aarne-Thompson Tale Types 333
Index 335

One of the more interesting elements of this collection for me was the timeline.  With roughly 30 years of scholarship collected here, it was interesting to see how Stone's opinions changed.  Popular topics and opinions tend to come and go in scholarship and Stone followed the trends as we all are prone to do.  And that is not a discredit of her work in any way, it is merely my fascination with the vagaries of a decades long career.  Don Haase says as much in his foreword. (And heaven knows SurLaLune itself would be quite different in many areas today if I were to start it from scratch now.  Oh, yes, it would! That's part of my motivation with the SurLaLune book titles although they are only part of what I would change on the site...)

Still, for those of you especially interested in women and fairy tale issues as well as Disney and fairy tales, this is a solid resource for the work by Stone as well as her bibliography.  Do I admit now that one of the first ways I judge a book these days is by turning to the bibliography? The articles about storytelling are also interesting.  Overall, this book hit many of my personal favorite topics with fairy tales and it will definitely be staying on my burgeoning shelves as a future reference.

Grandmother's footsteps by Germaine Greer

Oh, you generous readers. Reader Sarah sent me a link to an article I missed in The Guardian that appeared several days ago, Grandmother's footsteps by Germaine Greer.

In short, it is a wonderful article about Old Wives' Tales and the history of storytelling, focusing on the Italian history, especially with Straparola and Basile. Of course, the French salons and the Grimms are discussed in brief, too.

Here's an excerpt:

What I was doing was as old as the human race, and women have always done it. Even the most refined aristocrat of antiquity would have been told nursery stories by his first attendants, who were illiterate slaves and peasants. When it came to building a fanciful narrative of his own, he would recycle the same elements, changing them fundamentally in the process. The idiom of the original tale had to be standardised, and the events reinterpreted, to make the kind of sense that educated people would recognise, even to the point of ironic subversion of the fantastical elements in the story. Illiterate women went on providing the staple of the repertoire at the same time as educated people were turning their own variants of the tales into literature. As long as neither the women nor the children they told their tales to could read, the two kinds of tale-telling could flourish side by side.

The first collector of popular tales for print is known to us now as Gianfrancesco Straparola, who was connected with the Venetian publisher Comin de Trino. As "Stra-parola" means something like "crazy talk", we may be sure that this was not the real name of the author of the Piacevoli Notti (1550–1556). Following the convention established by Boccaccio's Decamerone (1353), the Straparola tales are set in a framing narrative, a 13-day party at the palace of the Bishop of Lodi on the island of Murano during carnevale; the narrators are 13 ladies. Two of the tales are recounted in dialect, one in Bergamasco and another in Paduan. The Straparola stories are pretty good examples of the kinds of stories old peasant women tell. The fashionable lady who tells the five stories on the second night pretends that the second of her tales is set in Bohemia, but it soon becomes clear that we are dealing with a story about the people living on the shores of the lagoon.

As always the article is much longer and merits a click and read through. It is full of history as well as a personal anecdote by Greer as the introduction.

In her email, Sarah said "It made me wonder if perhaps she's thinking about a book-length work on the subject." After reading the article, I hope Greer is considering a project related to the topic.

But if she doesn't, as always, one of the best books along similar lines is From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner. I also recommend The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (Norton Critical Editions) edited by Jack Zipes as a supplement.

The illustration is by H. J. Ford for Andrew Lang's The Arabian Nights' Entertainments (1898).

Storytelling with Elaine Muray

I've been having a tempermental internet connection all week, so if you have sent an email, I have hopefully received it and will reply in the next few days. Never hurts to try to send it to me again either.

Today I share an article about a storyteller in Ventura County, California: A tale to tell Local performance artist is building a community one story at a time by Michel Cicero. Primarily about Elaine Muray and her Ventura Village Voices Adult Storytelling Series, I am quoting the passages about story and narrative that are well-shared in the middle of the article. I used to live near the edge of Ventura County and this is one of those opportunities that makes me wistful about living there. Although I really can't complain since I'm just a few hours away from the National Storytelling Festival.

Scientific studies have confirmed what lovers of storytelling have always known: The human brain utilizes information more effectively when it’s received in narrative form. Much the same way it’s easier to remember information in verse, story form allows for better retention and comprehension. Muray even uses it as a trick to help with mundane tasks like remembering a day’s worth of errands. “I make a little story out of it, and I remember it all.” She says.

“People connect more to narrative than facts. We are hardwired for it.”

In some ways storytelling is as unlikely as likely a pursuit for Muray given the complete absence of it from her childhood — she wasn’t read to as a child. “A lot of storytellers have a vast foundation in stories that I didn’t have so I have to spend time at the library.” One such visit, she had a half hour to kill so she picked up a Chinese folk tale about a girl that was so small her father never noticed her. “I started to get teary eyed,” she recalled. “That simple folk tale resonated with me and my life, so sometimes people can’t hear when they are given facts . . . Grimm’s fairy tales are all about teaching safety.”

While she works with children and believes strongly in the benefits of narrative for learning comprehension and appreciation for reading, she says it’s the adults who must pave the way. “A lot of people think of storytelling as being for kids, but some of the best I’ve heard is geared toward adults. I think adults have to catch the fire in order to take their kids to events,” she says.

I always enjoy hearing stories of which tales resonate with readers and listeners and why, if they are able to explain why.

Storytelling 8-Year-Old

Storytelling is close to my heart since it goes hand in hand with fairy tales and folklore. So don't miss this article, Fairy tale ending for young storyteller, about Olivia Merryman, the 8-year-old "who was named the annual competition's elementary level "torchbearer" June 6 as the best in her age group" at the National Youth Storytelling Showcase last month.

And isn't Merryman just a perfect name for a storyteller anyway. I hope she has a long career.

And I just love that the National Storytelling Festival is in my home state...