In his successful Creative Storytelling, Jack Zipes showed how storytelling is a rich and powerful tool for self-expression and for building children's imaginations. In Speaking Out, this master storyteller goes further, speaking out against rote learning and testing and for the positive force within storytelling and creative drama during the K-12 years.

For the past four years, Jack Zipes has worked with the Neighborhood Bridges Program of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, taking his storytelling techniques into inner-city schools. Speaking Out is in part a record of the transformations storytelling can work on the minds and lives of young people. But it is also a vivid and exhilarating demonstration of a different kind of education - one built from deep inside each child.

Speaking Out is a book for storytellers, educators, parents, and anyone who cares about helping kids find within themselves the keys to imagination.