About this item
Anything is possible in the world of Latin American folklore, where Aunt Misery can trap Death in a pear tree; Amazonian dolphins lure young girls to their underwater city; and the Feathered Snake brings the first musicians to Earth. One in a series of folklore reference guides ("...an invaluable resource..."--School Library Journal) , this book features summaries of 470 tales told in Mexico, Central America and South America, a region underrepresented in collections of world folklore. The volume sends users to the best stories retold in English from the Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations, Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and colonists, African slave cultures, indentured servants from India, and more than 75 indigenous tribes from 21 countries.
About the Author
As a librarian and mother, Sharon Elswit has been sharing stories with children, parents, and teachers for over thirty-five years. With two Master's Degrees, she was heading towards becoming a college professor, but detoured into the public and then school library worlds, where she melded the discipline of research and library with a love of literature and the zing of working directly with children to create unique literature enrichment programs and resources.
She wrote The Jewish Story Finder to be a tool for educators and parents looking for that special story to meet their needs. Her first Finder, published in 2005, was recognized with a special honor in bibliography from the Reference Division of the Association of Jewish Libraries. The 2nd edition of The Jewish Story Finder, almost doubling the number of stories it promotes, has just been issued by McFarland & Company, Publishers in 2012. In between, she published The East Asian Story Finder, which points the way to 468 more folktales by subject. This book is now owned by university libraries as far away as Singapore, Australia, China, and Russia. And now, in 2015, after three years of research in the NYPL library at 42nd Street and the Schomburg Center collection up in Harlem, there is The Latin American Story Finder, highlighting and pointing the way to stories from a part of the world often left out of collections of folklore.
