Marvin Gaye may have popularized it in song, but stories have been coming down that grapevine for at least 35,000 years. As recently as 100 years ago, the great majority of people living on this earth were learning things the old-fashioned way--by word of mouth.

As in their previous collections of tales designed for kids to read and tell, this storytelling duo has gathered a diverse collection of thirty-one world tales that are fun to read out loud and especially fun to tell. Each story has tips for telling the story without the book, and the authors encourage budding tellers to "take these stories and make them your own. Don't tell them exactly the way we wrote them. Make them jump off the page!"

Twenty-nine story traditions are represented including Tibet ("One Good Trick Deserves Another"), Malaysia ("Ah-Choo!"), Denmark ("Scrambled Eggs"), India ("The King and the Wrestler"), and Eastern Europe ("The Thief Who Aimed to Please"). General tips for telling stories, follow-up activities, and story sources are included.

This latest collection embodies the philosophy of Hamilton and Weiss when it comes to the importance of nurturing the modern-day grapevine: "It's only when stories are passing from one person to another that they really come alive. It's the living story-the one told directly to us by someone else-that grabs our attention and touches our hearts."