Arlene Williams. Tales from the Dragon’s Cave: Peacemaking Stories for Everyone Sparks, NV: Waking Light Press, 1995; 160 pp. Available at local bookstores.

Sonia Levitin's children's book, A Piece of Home, is a brief but deeply moving story of Gregor, a young boy whose family is preparing to move to America from their Russian homeland. Before the move, the family members each select a particular object to bring to their new home, and Gregor’s choice of a Grandmother's blanket provides inner conflict throughout the narrative. Gregor faces the fears and insecurities that anyone would face in such a drastic change of living. In this beautifully illustrated storybook, Levitin provides children (and adults) with primary ways of thinking about issues of cultural conflict, displacement, and family separation.

Similar to Levitin's focus on family heirlooms, Arlene Williams' Tales From the Dragon's Cave narrates peacemaking stories that provide children with material, tangible ways to envision and conceptualize the seemingly abstract—but necessary—ideas of self-esteem, power, control, and conflict resolution. Williams incorporates a cast of archetypal figures and fairy tale landscapes into her stories, but to provide an environment of learning she reverses and reforms the familiar forces of witches, woodland creatures, and dragons (the central figures in most of the stories) to carry a distinct lesson in each parable. Like Levitin's story that brings two faraway worlds together, Williams brings together a spectrum of names, faces, and cultures to provide a rich landscape of possible worlds of peace. Tales From the Dragon's Cave is subtitled "peacemaking stories for everyone," and as such, they can give us all not only a fresh perspective about our own "adult" behaviors but also a way to implement changes in the way we live with others.

Brad Lucas