Educatiors, scholars, and non-scholars alike will highly appreciate Donna Eder's study . . . In this book, she not only reclaims the significance of storytelling within Western culture but also reintroduces the act of storytelling into the school curriculum. March 30, 2011
Journal of Folklore Research
An Life Lessons through Storytelling by Donna Eder is an engaging and timely, cross-cultural study of storytelling as a vehicle for children's social and ethical learning. Eder begins with interviews of Navajo and Kenyan storytellers and educators, providing in-depth knowledge about the nature and value of their storytelling traditions. She then presents group interviews with fourth- and fifth-grade students, exploring their responses to teaching stories from different cultures, relating them to their own lives. Concluding sections contextualize findings within existing research and explore issues of practical application in the classroom. Readers will see how storytelling empowers youth to engage in discussions, explore a range of issues from power, respect and community to fairness, equality and justice, and come to frame their own understandings of complex ethical issues within a society. Examining Aesop's Fables and Kenyan and Navajo storytelling traditions as models for classroom use, An Ethical Compass demonstrates the value of a cross-cultural approach to teaching through storytelling while providing deep insights into the social psychology of learning. [T]his book offers a cross culture, indterdisciplinary study of breadth and depth together with [Eder's] acknowledgements, analysis and advocacy.
B.C. Folklore