2023 Nautilus Gold Award Winner
Later life, for all the challenges and changes that come with it, is a time to embark upon a uniquely exciting adventure. It is, in many ways, an inner journey, one of deepening our understanding of our lives and our selves by tapping into the rich cache of experiences that have assembled silently inside of us through the years. When viewed with insight, openness and wonder, aging is an adventure in truly growing older, rather than-passively, resignedly-getting older.
In Fairy Tale Wisdom, authors Bill Randall, Barbara Lewis, and Andy Achenbaum crawl inside an assortment of fables, parables, and other stories that they recall from their childhood and revisit them as older adults. They re-read-and re-member-timeless tales like Hansel and Gretel, The Ugly Duckling, The Tortoise and The Hare, plus many others, through the lens of the still-unfolding stories of their own lives, with all the losses and loves, the layers and learning that 70-odd years involve.
Reflecting on these stories with a blend of playfulness and seriousness, the authors find themselves asking questions, making out patterns, and stumbling onto truths (not always comfortable) to which they might otherwise be blind. This delightful book is an invitation to see these old tales with fresh eyes and celebrate the wisdom that lurks between the lines of your own life.
Auflage
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Dateigröße
ISBN-13
978-0-9736313-4-0 (9780973631340)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
William L. (Bill) Randall is a retired Professor of Gerontology at St. Thomas University (STU) on Canada's Atlantic coast. Brought up in rural New Brunswick, he holds an A.B. from Harvard College, a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and M.Div. and Ed.D. degrees from the University of Toronto. After a ten-year career as a protestant minister with the United Church of Canada (1979-1989), he taught English and Adult Education for four years at Seneca College in Toronto. In 1995, he began a 27 year career at STU where he taught a range of undergraduate courses in gerontology and helped to pioneer a unique approach to the study of aging known as narrative gerontology. Narrative gerontology blends insights from the humanities and social sciences to probe the complex dynamics of inner (or biographical) development in later life. Bill has given keynotes, papers, and workshops on this approach at conferences and universities in Canada, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain. Co-recipient of the 2009 Theoretical Developments in Social Gerontology Award from the Gerontological Society of America, Bill is founding co-editor of the Narrative Works journal, founding organizer of the Narrative Matters international conferences, and author or co-author of over 70 publications on narrative gerontology and related topics, including eight books. Among these are Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old and The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life: Tales from the Coffee Shop, both published by Oxford University Press. To learn more about Bill or his publications, please visit www.williamlrandall.com. To learn more about his newest book, visit www.FairyTaleWisdom.com.
