Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About.STORY TIME Everyone has a story to tell, and that is the basis of Margaret Read MacDonald's Earth Care: World Folktales folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to primitive and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales take are demonstrably similar from culture to culture, and comparative studies of themes and narrative techniques have been successful in showing these relationships. Among the foremost folklorists of the 19th cent. were Oskar Dähnhardt in Germany, S. to Talk About (Linnet Books, $17.50). MacDonald has put together a compilation of 41 educational stories from more than 30 countries and ethnicities, as far-reaching as Nigeria and Romania. The fables fable, brief allegorical narrative, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral thesis or satirizing human beings. The characters of a fable are usually animals who talk and act like people while retaining their animal traits. The oldest known fables are those in the Panchatantra, a collection of fables in Sanskrit, and those attributed to the Greek Aesop, perhaps the most famous of all fabulists. are grouped into general lessons about protecting the Earth and its inhabitants, from caring for wetlands to "the folly of human greed." Each story is basic enough for young children to enjoy, but adults will learn from its teachings as well. Families will also love reading the tales aloud, as most are based on oral traditions. CONTACT: The Shoe String Press, Inc., (203) 239-2702, www.shoestringpress.com. |
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