The Power of the Story

Teya Rosenberg is an assistant professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at Southwest Texas State University.

This collection of 11 essays presents a view of the power and
effectiveness of storytelling in many different situations. The essays
collectively deal with storytelling in a variety of disciplines:
education, science, history, ecology, psychology, and literature. The
overall argument that emerges from the collection is that storytelling
is an integral and crucial part of intellectual pursuits, regardless of
the level or context.

As with any such compendium of essays, the quality is uneven. There are
three standouts: Mary Louise Chown’s account of how storytelling was
used to build self-esteem among a group of offenders; Sylvia
Bowerbank’s essay on storytelling as a means to understanding, and
perhaps making positive change to, the eco-system of the Bay area of
Hamilton, Ontario; and Cheryl Bartlett’s musings on the role of
storytelling in the study of sciences.

The first-person essays in the collection tend to be the least rigorous
in relating storytelling to intellectual or scholarly paradigms, an
important goal of the collection as a whole. In addition, the book would
have benefited from careful editing: there are some typos and
inconsistencies. Flaws aside, The Power of the Story is recommended for
the intriguing overview it provides of the role storytelling does, and
should, play in all levels of human thought and endeavor.