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Introduction Sherry Norfolk and Lyn Ford “Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of ­ others.” —­Justin Simien Inspiration for This Book ­ Today’s increasingly interconnected, globalized, and—­conversely—­ fragmented world demands that we encourage students to appreciate the real­ity of ­human diversity and to recognize universally held values and beliefs. Folktales incorporated in curricular planning and pre­sen­ta­tion can lay the foundation for cultural understanding. As emphasized in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), “folktales play an invaluable role . . . ​ in bringing ­people closer together and ‘ensuring exchange and understand- ing among them.’ ” Folktales can open win­dows into other cultures, transmitting a society’s customs, attitudes, values, and philosophies of life. They can break down bar- riers they can build ac­cep­tance. In 1985, when the Haitian boat lift brought thousands of Haitian refu- gees into southern Florida, Sherry was a ­ children’s librarian with the Miami-­ Dade Public Library. Suddenly, the schools in northern Dade County ­ were flooded with ­ children who spoke “differently,” dressed “differently,” and acted and reacted “differently” than their fellow students. The result was predictable: immediate re­sis­tance, distrust, and unrest in school populations. As one school official explained, “The Haitian kids are being meta­phor­ically kicked to the bottom rung of society and stepped on to keep them in their place.” When their new building opened in 1980, the North Dade Regional Library where Sherry worked had begun storytelling outreach to local schools. By 1985, the schools had become convinced of the value of storytell- ing. It was no surprise when the library began to receive calls from desper- ate principals, counselors, media specialists, and teachers who asked if the storytellers might use the power of story to change the viewpoints of ­those who considered themselves “the Americans,” so that they no longer saw their new classmates as “strangers” or “other.”