From tall tales, trickster tales, and noodlehead stories to hoaxes, urban legends, riddles and songs-here are more than 70 stories from around the world and across the centuries that you can pull out of your story bag at a moment's notice-to read aloud or re-tell before, between and after daily activities; or integrate into lessons and learning opportunities. Most take just minutes to read. The country or culture of origin is noted for each story, and there is a detailed bibliography, introductory notes on humor and folklore, and a discussion of the healing power of humor.

 

Humor and the Healing Arts: A Multimethod Analysis of Humor Use in Health Care

Offering a social scientific look at humor's role in medical transactions, this volume is based on extensive field study in seven medical settings. It includes excerpts from dozens of actual conversations between patients and caregivers. Analysis of these episodes reveals that humor is a practical tool used to meet many medical objectives.

The Adventures in the Rifle Brigade

This is the memoir of a British army officer whose primary service was in the Peninsular War. After a short period of peace, which he spent in his native Scotland, he was ordered to Belgium where he participated in the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo.
You will find Kinciad's memoirs to be exceptionally enjoyable.  Not a schwashbuckler like Marbot, his memoirs are more down to earth and, in most cases, full of humor.  Whether he always intended this humor is questionable, but it is there nevertheless.

Painting With Light, 4th Edition

Painting With Light was the first book on cinematography written by a major Hollywood cameraman. Published in 1949 and now put back into print, it is one of the best and most unusual books in the field. Written with good humor and full of helpful diagrams and photographs, it is certainly the most entertaining.

The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492

Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time.

Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom.