Chuck Lipsig wrote this review.
Jack Zipes is one of the most noted collectors of, and commentators on, fairy tales. In Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives, Zipes writes about his activities as a storyteller outside the universities, where he has worked with schoolchildren in programs ranging from several weeks to several months. In both schools and extracurricular programs, he has taught them how to make their own judgments and understand their own values within the realm of telling, discussing, acting, and recreating fairy tales.
If this were just about how to implement such a program, this book would be of interest only to a small group of educators. However, as part of this program, Zipes talks about several themes he uses, as well as a variety of types of fairy tales and other stories suitable for storytelling (such as animal tales, utopian tales, and science fiction). In addition, Zipes provides a significant number of examples and variations of fairy and other tales in the description of his programs. The result is that despite the education-specific material, a useful taxonomy of fairy tales is created, complete with examples of those tales.
However, this is not a book for those with casual interest. One needs a strong interest in either education or fairy tales — or better yet, both — for this book to be worthwhile reading. On the other hand, it does not take a scholarly background to read this book. Zipes is happily free of the gobbledygook that passes for academic writing these days.
Zipes’s leftist political orientation comes clearly through in Creative Storytelling. However, as in previous books of his I’ve reviewed, his political beliefs do not get in the way of the material he provides. Ironically, his excellent version of “The Bremen Town Musicians” which he considers an illustration of “collective heroism and solidarity,” I find to be a celebration of individualism at its finest. I suspect that it’s the streak of anti-authoritarianism in the tale that appeals to both the leftist in Zipes, and the laissez faire capitalist in myself.
There is one major thing that might be expected from the title that the book does not deliver. Little advice is given for a public storyteller, who has, at best, brief occasional contact with individuals, such as a storyteller in a public library settings. This isn’t a flaw, merely a caveat to those who might expect material dealing specifically with that topic.
As for the program itself, I suspect that it takes very special qualities of teacher and storyteller to implement. The teacher must be willing to allow another educator to have predominance in the classroom for the time devoted to the program. The storyteller must be open to having students express opinions that might be different from his or hers.
I’m reminded of a high school teacher I had who taught about the American government by holding a mock Constitutional convention as to how the students would amend the Constitution. This was fascinating to me, until the students passed an amendment that he disliked, at which point he bullied and tongue-lashed the class into repealing the amendment — as if it would make any real-world difference. It was, I admit, educational, just not in the way the teacher intended. Zipes’s program is open to similar abuse in the hands of a pernicious teacher or storyteller.
Two personal asides: I note that Zipes worked his programs in schools in Gainesville, Florida, while he was at the University of Florida. Having lived in Gainesville for over ten years, as well as having a wife and several nieces and nephews who were victims of the teachers in this city’s public school system, I note that Zipes was extremely lucky to have found teachers in this town who were amenable to as open and creative education as he proposed. (Also noted is that the above-mentioned teacher of Constitutional process was not in Gainesville.) The other aside is to note that, as usual, reviewing a Zipes book has inspired me to write my own versions of fairly tales. This time, it’s “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel” that I’m working on.
Creative Storytelling is a book that works at three levels: as a political tract, a presentation of an educational program, and a taxonomy of fairy tales. It is to Zipes’s credit that none of these functions interfere with each other. The result is a solid book for those with special interest in education or fairy tales.
(Routledge, 1995)
