Books like The Power of Stories — picked by fans

Mother Nature must be very grateful this handbook exists. Within its 368 pages is a treasury of time-tested stories, creative activities, and methods that environmental educators and storytellers can use to affect people’s pro-environmental behaviour. Its collection of 21 chapters share a myriad of ways to use storytelling for a greener world. Each chapter has a different author(s), bringing their perspective on environment, community, and learning through stories. They explore the links between storytelling and emotional literacy, place, environmental justice, connecting with alienated youngsters, how to encourage children and adults’ curiosity about nature, building community, sustainability, and indigenous peoples, local legends, human-animal communication, and how to co-create a sustainable future together.

This is a book for all who work with people – in other words, it is a book for everyone. It is full of inspiration and practical tools to bring transformation and healing into your daily life, wherever you are. During times of conflict, storytelling dedicated to peace and reconciliation has proven successful in creating a common ground between people of all ages, from different cultures and disparate world views.

The New Story includes more than 30 tales from around the world plus easy-to-do exercises, with contributions from six modern storytellers at work in places like Israel, Kurdistan, and Sierra Leone.

Birds of Heaven is a tiny book full of noble thoughts on why stories and storytelling are integral to our humanity. Okri, the Man Booker Prize author of ‘The Famished Road’, eloquently states ‘The universe began as a story… we are part human, part stories.’

The text contains two inspirational essays on the meaning of language and its power to shape our lives. The work presents an alternative spiritual response to the problems of the present day. It is bursting with beautiful and insightful gems.

If you feel inhibited about making up stories and telling them to children, this is the book for you. Encouraging you to spin golden tales, Nancy Mellon shows how you can become a confident storyteller and enrich your family with the power of story. Children love the unique and human quality of storytelling, and parents and teachers alike can learn this practical, magical art with Nancy’s methods, tips and resources. This book may help give you storytelling wings - even if you didn’t think you could fly this way! It is a must for any adult who seeks to enrich and deepen communications with the young ones in their life.

This book is a classic story that transported me to a realm where fairies come alive—I felt I could be there dancing with them, too.

I love the story's initial opening with the magical expression, “Once upon a time.” It’s like opening a gateway to my mind’s eye, imagining life in that country that was very close to Fairy Land, guided by the exquisite illustrations in the book.

I like also very much the simplicity of the names of the characters, like for example, “Princess Niente (Princess Nobody) and of the structure of the story divided into three chapters.

The end is sweet: “Journeys end in lovers meeting, and so do stories.” And offered me a pearl with the quote of Apuleius and the poem.

This book is one of my earliest inspirations, and I’ve never met anyone else who’s even heard of it.

Poison is the very first book that made me think, “Wow. I want to be able to write something like this.” I loved the story, but what I’ll never forget is how the ending made me feel. This book is both simple and complex; a wild, unpredictable journey and a natural progression of events.

I write with the hopes of someday completing something as lovely as this.

Wild at Heart is my #1 favorite historical romance. Unfortunately, it is out of print. The writing is beautiful, the story heart-wrenching, and the heroine adventurous in a subtle way as she challenges those who are studying a man raised by wolves to view him not as an object but as a person. I found this story to be perfection. If you can find a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

While we would love to think we are always rational, we are hard-wired for story not the rational data (albeit key data can be a strong anchor in a story). I started my career far more in the assumption of rational data trumps all, but recognised, through bumps and bruises, how stories can overtake decision-making. When I learned how to tell a better story, I learned how to get the results I needed. Gabrielle is such a down-to-earth, energising speaker and writer, and this book provided me with such a practical, relatable framework for always having a good story or two in my back pocket.  

Matthew is a serial public speaking champion who basically should be entered in The Moth Hall of Fame asap. If you've never heard Matthew Dicks talk, pause this and go watch his videos online. He's that good. What I love about his book is that he shares how he crafts his own stories and shares some amazing tips on how to capture everyday events that can later on be turned into powerful stories. Although this book isn't so much geared towards business or work, I think everyone can learn a great deal from Matthew's impressive experience of making people pay attention and connect to what you say (both as a best-selling novelist, school teacher, and public speaking champion).

This is not even a motherhood-focused book, but it absolutely had to make this list. It completely transformed my motherhood journey. It helped me find my new identity in motherhood. It allowed me to recognize that I have stories to tell - about my experience as a mother and also about myself separate from motherhood.

It allowed me to take life a little slower and be more intentional and mindful in my living and parenting. It’s essentially what moved me to start writing my poetry book in the first place. It helped illuminate my life in a way I never noticed before. I am a better mother because of this book.