This is a book about story, the human experience, teaching and learning, creativity and community. Story is so much more than decoding text and writing using academic language. It also includes literature and all forms of the arts; digital forms of story, from social media to documentation of history; and new forms of multilayered, multigenre research. Story is the backbone and the catalyst for personal connections, appropriation of knowledge, and synergy of knowledge for global citizens. Critical qualitative research is the methodology by which to document and analyze what is really going on in the complex, multidirectional interactions. The authors maintain that story in a broad and newly enlightened sense may help us to break out from the narrow concepts of literacy, content knowledge related to measureable standards, and random facts that are unrelated to dispositions for addressing human needs. Literacy as a conceptual synthesis of knowledge, skills, and dispositions has been giving us glimpses of synergistic ways to approach learning and teaching.

Elizabeth P. Quintero is Professor and Coordinator of Early Childhood Studies at California State University Channel Islands. She is author of numerous publications including Critical Literacy in Early Childhood Education: Artful Story and the Integrated Curriculum (Peter Lang).
Mary Kay Rummel has been appointed Poet Laureate of Ventura County, California. Her seventh book of poetry, The Lifeline Trembles, is being published by Blue Light Press as winner of the 2015 Poetry Prize. She is a professor emerita from the University of Minnesota, Duluth and teaches classes in multicultural, multilingual literacy at California State University, Channel Islands.

Contents: Introduction: Deep Learning and Generative Research Through Story ¿ Critical Approaches to Learning With Refugee Stories ¿ Naming Stories and Critical Literacy: A Classroom Narrative ¿ Connecting Funds of Knowledge to Curriculum: Children and Teachers Using Story ¿ Writing From the Heart: Fourth-Grade Students Write Poetry ¿ Loving Tulips Across Three Years: A Long-Term Project Story Begins ¿ Conversations: A Tulip Tallness From the Ground ¿ Changing the Way We Story Our Lives ¿ Stories Within Stories: Case Study Narrative of Students Creating Stories ¿ Storying Learning: Assessment in Early Childhood Settings ¿ Storying: Ways of Seeing ¿ Epilogue: Taking Agency and Paying Attention.