[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we welcome guest contributor Rachel Tochiki from Oahu, Hawaii. Now a senior majoring in elementary education and psychology at Boston University, Rachel offers a review of the book Peace Tales. With Father’s Day coming up on Sunday, we encourage dads to read stories of peace to their kids.]
One step that we can take toward achieving peace is educating children about peaceful conflict resolution. Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About, by Margaret Read MacDonald, includes 34 folktales and proverbs from around the globe, organized into two sections: war and peace.
Parents, teachers, and librarians can use this book to teach about conflict resolution and its application to children’s lives. It includes notes and suggestions to make reading aloud more engaging, and to emphasize the morals of the stories.
MacDonald explains the purpose of the tales:
- To encourage children to look inward.
- To present kids with several possible answers to a problem.
- To give children a positive sense of value and purpose — a sense of their own strength and inherent morality.
Peace Tales includes a pairing of stories from Eastern Europe about two goats who meet at the center of a narrow bridge. The folktale appears once in the section on war, and once in the section on peace, with the two versions presenting different resolutions to the conflict.
In one, the two goats try to push each other out of the way, but end up pushing each other off the bridge into the water. In the other, the goats carefully balance and squeeze past each other to cooperatively and effectively continue on their way.
MacDonald describes peace as a choice that requires constant maintenance: “It is hard work. A never-ending task.” Though a challenge, working toward peace is important and better than the violence and hatred that can ensue otherwise.
Though the tales come from many countries, the messages of peace are universal. MacDonald comments, “In the past, mankind’s tales have stressed trickery and power more often than conflict resolution. Is it possible that by changing the tales we tell we can change our warring nature? It is worth a try.”
Peace Tales is a great resource for introducing children to stories about peaceful conflict resolution rather than those that glorify war.