Welcome to our Advent and Christmas 2013 launch of our new website! In a world of information overload, Hawthorn is about lighting fires through stories, rather than filling more buckets. So this year we will be focusing on the power of story for helping realise our mission of building a more peaceful, creative, sustainable world…
The forthcoming storytelling school series
‘A picture paints a thousand words; a story paints a thousand pictures!’ Winter evenings invite more storytelling, and we will launch our new Storytelling School Series with a large workshop for teachers in January 2014. The first two books will be The Storytelling School: Handbook for Teachers by Chris Smith and Adam Guillain and Stories for Children to Retell.
The books have been piloted, so are already successful, tried and tested. Primary teachers say that The Storytelling School has transformed their approach to literacy and writing. Sir Tim Brighouse, former Schools Commissioner for London, says: ‘[it] provides a foundation for the most remarkable growth in pupil confidence.’
Pie Corbett, a respected literacy educator, writes in his Foreword to the book that, ‘Stories are magical. Every teacher knows that… May this handbook help create Storytelling Schools across this country and indeed around the world!.’
New books
We have also just published Ashley Ramsden and Sue Hollingsworth’s magical, The Storyteller’s Way: A sourcebook for inspired storytelling. This was launched at the August 2013 International School of Storytelling Festival at Emerson College, Sussex, UK. Whether you are starting out as a storyteller or want to develop your skills, this is an essential guide. The authors share the triumphs and trials of their personal storytelling journeys and explore what it means to be a storyteller. Ashley’s inspired telling of Tistou: The boy with green thumbs led to our publishing this classic story.
And of course, we have some good stories just out… Sven Nordqvist’s laugh out loud, Findus plants meatballs, and Beatrys Lockie’s moving retelling of Hector Malot’s Nobody’s Child: The adventures of Remy, a classic adventure story for 8-12 year olds that is often told in Steiner Waldorf Schools.
– Martin Large, publisher, Advent 2013