Don't Leave the Story in the Book

Drawing from 30 years of teaching and professional development experience, the author offers a roadmap for using children's literature to provide authentic learning. Featuring a “storyteller’s voice,” each chapter includes a case study about how a particular fiction or nonfiction work can be used in an early childhood classroom; a series of open-ended questions to help readers construct their own inquiry units; and a bibliography of children’s literature. This book provides a unique synthesis of ideas based on constructivist approaches to learning, including the importance of positive dispositions and learning communities, the nature of higher-order thinking, and the relationship between methods such as guided inquiry in the sciences and balanced literacy.

Mary Hynes-Berry brings a lifetime of using oral storytelling to promote learning in her work with preservice and inservice teachers at Erikson Institute, Chicago, Illinois.

"Hynes-Berry offers practical ideas for working with teachers and students in professional learning communities in preservice and in-service education and with families, children and teachers in innovative community literacy projects.”

—Young Children

“When children are given ample opportunity to use language, they have a greater potential to increase vocabulary and syntactic skills. Hynes-Berry’s book offers numerous suggestions on how to give students such opportunity. Her approach is practical, simple, and is based on solid theoretical research on how young students learn.”

—Teachers College Record

“Don’t Leave the Story in the Book is a boon to every classroom teacher.”
—Vivian Gussin Paley

“In this book, Mary tells a series of stories that contribute richness and depth to our understanding of quality intellectual work in early childhood classrooms.”
—From the Foreword by Jie-Qi Chen, Erikson Institute

“Passion and wonder are in short supply in schools these days. If you want to bring powerful stories into your classroom that inspire curiosity and questions, spark deep thinking and cultivate thoughtful conversations, embrace this book!”
—Anne Goudvis, author, co-author of Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement

“Don’t Leave the Story in the Book is beautifully written. The ideas are inspiring and brilliant. It is very relevant to the current discussion about the Common Core's outrageous virtually exclusive focus on information text.”
—Yong Zhao, College of Education, University of Oregon, author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization