For education Book

Hamilton has collected creation myths from 25 different cultures and put them in one volume. There are stories from Iceland, New Guinea, Russia, Nigeria, Zambia, Greece, Egypt and Guatemala just to name a few. In addition to this, the creation stories from Judaism and Christianity are included as are stories from two native american cultures, the Huron and the Blackfoot. This variety in and of itself makes this book worth a read. Hamilton also classifies creation myths based on type and give some information about the culture from which the creation story comes.

There are Two main reasons that I gave this book three stars even with the weight of the positives mentioned above. First of all, Hamilton puts all of the information about the culture of the creation stories at the end of the story rather than the beginning. As I was reading the stories, I found myself flipping to the end of each story so that I could read the story with the knowledge of its origin.

The second major drawback is that the illustrations included, though interesting and captioned in order to show how they connected to the story, did not add to the understanding or communication of the story. They did not have the life of the stories and, even with the captions, were not always clearly connected to what I was reading.

Despite these drawbacks, this book is worth reading and using in the classroom. With some pre-teaching for each creation story and some creativity in presentation - maybe tracking country of origin on a map or finding culturally relevant images to add to the story - there is wonderful material in this book with which to work. The book is recommended for grade 7 and up, but if they are read aloud, the stories may be appropriate for upper elementary grades as well.