Enrich your family life, connect with your children, and celebrate your ancestors by learning to tell family stories, folktales, and nursery rhymes. Telling Tales: Storytelling in the Family is a fascinating guide to the art of gathering and telling stories. Written by three renowned storytellers, Telling Tales includes personal stories, how-to tips and extensive resource lists, and builds upon the success of the acclaimed first edition. Introduction by Ruth Stotter

Gail de Vos, Merle Harris and Celia Barker Lottridge are internationally-known storytellers. Gail de Vos and Merle Harris are from Edmonton. Celia Barker Lottridge lives in Toronto.

Gail de Vos' profile page

Merle Harris has always been fascinated with the oral tradition and loved listening to stories. In 1972, as a new mother in a new country, she found herself remembering her childhood in Rhodesia and how African parents used storytelling rather than lecturing with their children, and falling back on this tradition to raise her sons.

Merle Harris' profile page

Celia Barker Lottridge is a writer and storyteller who has written several highly acclaimed children's books, including Ticket to Curlew (winner of the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award and the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award), Berta: A Remarkable Dog (nominated for the Texas Bluebonnet Award, Horn Book starred review) and Stories from the Life of Jesus (Publishers Weekly starred review). She wrote Home Is Beyond the Mountains after hearing her mother's stories about growing up in Persia and after reading letter's written by Celia's aunt, Susan Shedd. Born in Iowa and raised in the United States, Celia now lives in Toronto.

Celia Barker Lottridge's profile page

• Storytelling World Award - Special Storytelling Resource
• Applied Arts Magazine Awards - Editorial Book Cover

"Three professsional storytellers collaborate to explain the power and use of storytelling in family life. They cover all aspects of the form--from how to develop a story about your own family to universal myths and legends." Alison Gzowski, The Globe and Mail

"In Telling Tales, de Vos, Harris, and Barker Lottridge write convincingly of the power of storytelling to secure an individual's foothold in the family. Stories convey knowledge of family heritage within a framework of individual human experience, and bring humour, understanding, and healing to present relationships, particularly those between parents and children. The authors remind the reader.of the creative, intimate partnership that exists between parent and child as both engage in the imaginative construction of images and meaning." Ann Patteson (Queen's University), Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2002)

". we all secretly admire those friends who can transform the most banal of quotidian happenstance into epic narratives.. In accordance with the principles of storytelling--i.e., that you should demonstrate a point in narrative rather than explicitly state it--Telling Tales is replete with anecdotes from the three authors as they apprehended the craft for themselves." Jay Smith, VueWeekly

"Originally published in 1995, Telling Tales is a wonderful book for anyone interested in storytelling. Warm, non-academic writing flows easily through its pages. Instruction - both poignant and funny - is interspersed with stories..An enjoyable read if only for the stories themselves, Telling Tales proves the authors' claims that we all love a good story." Theresa Paltzat, Canadian Book Review Annual, 2005

"The authors of Telling Tales: Storytelling in the Family have created a volume that is at once highly informative and entertaining. This book is a useful compendium of information about storytelling, written especially for parents who want to explore the magic of "tales" with their children. The expertise and experiences of the authors are shared with charm and rich humour." Kathryn McNaughton, Resource Links

"Sometimes I think that one of the best-kept secrets is the power of the story.. Three of Canada's most outstanding storytellers have contributed to this welcome revision of the first edition.Telling Tales is highly recommended for all school and public libraries as well as university collections and will be of interest to adults including parents, storytellers, and those interested in Family Studies." Lorraine Douglas, CM Magazine

"[T]hree of Canada's most celebrated storytellers, Gail de Vos, Merle Harris, and Celia Barker Lottridge, join hands in this newly revised and updated edition of Telling Tales: Storytelling in the Family to revitalize the power of storytelling by pointing to its origins: the family....The strength of this new edition lies, not in the addition of new material, because really the work does not represent a significant departure from the first edition (Dragon Hill Publishing, 1995), but rather in its beauty as an object: The cover is a stunning mix of family photos with snippets of text and images from folktales, while the interior is nicely designed and arranged. Although the order of the chapters and the chapter content, with some modifications, are essentially the same as in the first edition, an enriched section on storytelling resources and an index benefit the reader. This book is highly recommended for anyone working with the children-folk-lorists, librarians, parents, storytellers, and writers." Pam Harris, Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, Vol. 28, No.4, December 2004

"From simple systems such as keeping a recipe file of story ideas, to the process of retelling stories in order to develop their true meaning, the authors remind us that story telling is an art accessible to anyone with the desire to share stories and the gumption to try." Nancy Jo Cullen, Alberta Views

"Highly recommended reading -- especially for aspiring storytellers wanting to draw upon their own wealth of family stories, personalities, anecdotes, folklore, songs and poetry." The Bookwatch

"Telling Tales is a primer for would-be storytellers and begins with some great folk tales, including tales from other cultures. Most will be familiar, because good stories cross cultural boundaries, but the reading of them will bring a warm flash of memory to your mind.. Telling Tales provides good fodder for the telling but hopefully it will also encourage families to celebrate their own stories -- the ones that bind generations together." Susan Jones, St. Albert Gazette