Articles from The Learning Tree Store Publication OCTOBER '05

Profile: Norah Dooley, Storyteller

Norah Dooley is one of New England’s most popular storytellers, giving performances at schools and libraries all over the region. She is also a musician and published author. Those who have not had the opportunity to attend her performances or listen to her CD’s may be familiar with her picture book Everybody Cooks Rice, one of four in a series of children’s books about her neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Norah credits storytelling as a creative source and discipline for her writing. "I started telling bedtime stories to our children. After they fell asleep, I wrote them down. I still work out story ideas by telling them." says Dooley, educator and mother of four. "Storytelling is an underutilized part of our human heritage. It is one of the best teaching tools I know. You can tell things to kids in a story that they’d never listen to in any other form."

Norah’s stories for children and adults come from all over the world and from her own backyard. "I find story ideas everywhere." Historical research is an important source for Norah. "I always loved stories of ‘olden times’ when I was a girl. The romance of history still has me enthralled." Her three storytelling CDs are self-produced and were recorded locally in Ashburnham, MA. They are Stories Nobody Told Me, (2002) Stories from the Neighborhood (2002) and Music of Angels (1999).

Performer... Norah Dooley has performed in the greater Boston area for over ten years. She has been a featured storyteller in Christmas and Spring Revels, the Newport Folk Festival and the 3 Apples Storytelling Festival. The Talespinners, a multigenerational storytelling troupe perform under her direction. She has worked in community theaters and presented workshops on storytelling throughout New England. Music is her avocation. She plays blues fiddle in a neighborhood blues band, fiddles and plays whistle for contra dances, and leads traditional dances for children and families. Norah is a member of the A.F.M.-C.I.O./ Local 1000, and is listed on the Massachusetts Cultural Council roster of artists.

Author... Everybody Cooks Rice, (Carolrhoda, 1991) is the first in a series of four books used in schools and libraries all over the country. The story is about a girl named Carrie who is searching for her younger brother at dinnertime. She wanders through her neighbor’s kitchens and tastes a bit of everyone’s dinner in her travels. The neighbors, who hail from six different countries, are all cooking rice. Everybody Bakes Bread (Carolrhoda, 1996), the second book in the series, shares the same theme of commonality in diversity and was the ALA "Pick of the Lists" for that year. Everybody Serves Soup (Carolrhoda, 2000), an Honor Book in the Social Studies category of the ISLA prizes in 2001, and Everybody Brings Noodles (Carolrhoda, 2002) share a story line of further adventures with Carrie in her inner-city neighborhood. Recipes are included at the end of each book.

While often invited to speak on writing and publishing, Dooley is quick to point out, "I am not a famous author. I am someone who had a good idea for a book. Becoming a published author with the first submission of a manuscript is so atypical." But she feels it makes a good story, especially for beginning writers, teachers and storytellers. Norah is still visibly tickled by the serendipity that promoted her from the ranks of would-be-published to the smaller cadre of published children’s writers.

Her enthusiasm and sense of wonder at her good fortune encourage and inspire her audiences to tell their own stories. "Everybody has a story to tell. I wrote about my neighbors, especially the children on my block in Central Square, Cambridge. Most of the characters in Everybody Bakes Bread and Everybody Cooks Rice series are based on my friends and their families. The mutual affection and respect we have for one another is, to me, the most important ‘ingredient’ in the book."