LizardLand (a satire one hundred million years in the making)

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Bun," "The Timid Little Hare," "Molly Whuppie" have been passed on with as vivid and distinct personalities as those of people we know well. She wrote a short biography of Randolph Caldecott, which was published on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, prepared new editions of the Andrew Lang "color" fairy-tale books, and contributed to many periodicals and encyclopedias.

Another storyteller who was honored at the festival was Ruth Sawyer. Her introduction to storytelling came from her Irish nurse, Johanna, who instilled in her a deep love of Irish folklore. Sawyer began telling stories and collecting folklore when she was sent to Cuba in to organize kindergartens.

At Columbia University, where she had been awarded a scholarship, she studied folklore. She began to tell stories in schools, and then came the memorable experience of hearing Shedlock tell Andersen fairy tales. During this trip, she heard what became perhaps her best-known story, "The Voyage of the Wee Red Cap. Rarely did Sawyer miss the St. Nicholas Eve program, and rarely did she miss telling one of her Christmas stories. She went to nearby states and later wrote: One of the best of my storytelling experiences was at the Boys' Club in Greenwich, Connecticut.

There were about eighty boys in the club, confirmed crapshooters, pool-players and delinquents. I held them for the first three days by telling them stories of the Ringling Brothers Circus and the few days I had been traveling with it. From the circus we passed on to Kipling, Stockton, Mark Twain, and the boys started using the library.

Out of this experience, too, came Tonio Antonio. In Mexico she found material for The Least One. Tickets reserved in advance but not received and any tickets still available may be picked up at the Storytelling Festival ticket table in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel Ballroom.

Tuesday, June 19, Watanabe will tell his story in Japanese. Wednesday, June 20, Colwell, Public Library, Hendon, England: Hohne will tell her story in German. Dodson, Public Library, Brooklyn, N. Thursday, June 21, Frances Clarke Sayers, storyteller, author, and lecturer on children's literature, Los Angeles, Calif: The Way of the Storyteller, a book about storytelling as a creative art that continues to inspire both new and experienced storytellers, and My Spain, a "storyteller's year of collecting," followed.

Sawyer was awarded the Newbery Medal for Roller Skates in , a story based on her childhood experiences in New York City, and the Regina Medal in for "a lifetime of distinguished contribution to children's literature. Beryl Robinson, a Boston Public Library storyteller who had heard her often, wrote this remembrance of her: Ruth Sawyer's life brought rich gifts to children everywhere.

Gifts of fun and laughter and wonder. Of thoughtfulness, deep absorption, and joy. Gifts that inspire courage and bring awareness of beauty. The stretching of the imagination, the opening of the heart, and the widening of the horizons that come whenever there is good storytelling, whether given richly by the master storyteller or read from a beautifully written page.

But she was also a great teacher; and countless numbers of children in the future will share in her giving as their teachers and librarians follow the way of the storyteller she so brilliantly illumined for them. Thorne-Thomsen, who had a strong influence on the development of storytelling in libraries, believed that imaging exercises and listening to oral literature prepared children for reading. The imaging exercises that Thorne-Thomsen used in are similar to what psychologists today call "guided imagery.

W h e n children became stuck in decoding, T h o r n e Thomsen advised their teachers to abandon any further effort at that task and, instead, to tell the children a story. As children listen to stories, they create images or pictures in their minds. We now know that even if a child can decode he may not be reading, that is, the words and sentences may have no meaning for him. This insight into the relationship of oral literature, imaging, and reading, shared by Gudrun T h o r n e Thomsen, Francis Parker, and John Dewey, was lost for many years while schools emphasized the technical aspects of reading.

The early children's librarians thought of storytelling as a form of reading guidance. The purpose of the library story hour was to introduce children to the best kind of books and to broaden their reading interests. The Carnegie Library at Pittsburgh, for instance, became famous for its storyhour cycles on Greek myths, Norse mythology, and hero tales. At the New York Public Library, Anna Cogswell Tyler quoted earlier carefully selected stories from books on the library shelves on the assumption that story-hour listeners would want to read the stories for themselves. Circulation figures seem to bear this out.

The children's librarian at the Cleveland Public Library noted in her annual report for that Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen circulated 93 times at the two branch libraries where the story was told at story hour, compared with four circulations at the two branches where it had not been told. Such early reports show that the keeping of statistics to justify library programs is not new. Storytelling in libraries was widely accepted though it was not without its critics. John Cotton Dana, then librarian of the Newark N.

Public Library and past president of the American Library Association, thought that storytelling was the responsibility of the schools and considered it an ill use of the librarian's time and energy. Writing for Public Libraries in , Dana labeled librarian-storytellers "altruistic, emotional, dramatic, irrepressible childlovers who do not find ordinary library work gives sufficient opportunities for altruistic indulgence," and advised any library that could spare such misguided souls "to set them at teaching the teachers the art of storytelling.

Librarians went out into the schools, playgrounds, and other recreational centers to tell stories, as reported in Moore's " R e p o r t of the Committee on Storytelling," published in Playground in Libraries in ports of entry, particularly New York and Boston, carried out extensive programs among immigrants. At the New York Public Library, story hours were occasionally told in a foreign language. These story hours were conducted by a library assistant of the nationality or by a foreign visitor.

Courtesy of the NewYork Public Library. Italian boys listening to Pinocchio told in their native language by an Italian visitor at the NewYork Public Library, There were few librarians like Edna Lyman Scott who publicly stated that storytelling was "an art in itself, with the great underlying purpose of all art, to give joy to the world," and that "only as storytelling [was given] its real place in the world of art [could it attain] its full significance. Both Shedlock and T h o r n e Thomsen emphasized simplicity, careful selection, and reliance on the human voice alone to convey the nuances of the story.

Librarian-storytellers considered themselves to be interpreters of literature for children; their goal was "to cultivate a capacity for literary appreciation in children. Out of the repetition of melodious expressions as they reach the ear comes an appreciation of language not easily gained from the printed page. By that age children were expected to have mastered the mechanics of reading, but librarians noticed that at about the same age children began to lose interest in reading. Picture-book hours for children ages five to seven started at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh as early as and other libraries soon followed.

Library story hours for children of school age reached a peak in the s. In Jordan estimated that the Cronans were telling stories to 1, library listeners per week as well as to 4, classroom pupils in auditorium groups. Attendance at Carnegie Library story hours peaked in at nearly , Shift in Emphasis from Oral Narration to the Printed Word In Macmillan created the first juvenile department in a publishing house.

Other publishers soon followed. The influx of illustrators from Europe after World War I—artists influenced by the impressionists and expressionists, cubists, and other postimpressionists, who brought with them a rich tradition— and the development of better methods of reproducing art in books set the stage for the flowering of the American picture book. Library story hours for school-age children were scheduled less frequently as attendance declined.

The proliferation of organized activities competed for the children's attention, and greater administrative demands made on children's librarians left less time for story-hour preparation. This was the period, too, of the early-childhood movement. Lucy Sprague Mitchell spearheaded the "here and now" school of publishing— "here and now" meaning the familiar and immediate. Though perhaps still unaware of what was happening, the library profession—along with general society—was moving toward an emphasis on information. In Elizabeth Nesbitt, then associate professor of library science at Carnegie Library School, made an impassioned plea for the continuation of the library story hour and the importance of the storyteller as an interpreter of literature for the child.

Nesbitt carefully distinguished between reading for information and reading for literary appreciation. Library story hours for ages three to five flourished during the baby boom of the s, but time needed for preparation for the story hour for older boys and girls was suspect in an increasingly technological society and a cost-effective economy. There were other changes taking place too.

Beginning in the s thousands of Puerto Ricans came to live in the United States. In an effort to serve the Spanish-speaking community better, the New York Public Library hired Pura Belpre, "the first public librarian who preserved and disseminated Puerto Rican folklore throughout the United States.

Belpre recalled growing up "in a home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed down by word of mouth for generations. As a child I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I heard. The characters became quite real to me. I remember during school recess that some of us would gather under the shade of the tamarind tree.

There we would take turns telling stories. In spite of the many moves she was an excellent student and in she entered the University of Puerto Rico, intending to become a teacher. But a year later, on a trip to NewYork City to attend the wedding of her older sister Elisa, fate intervened.

Ernestine Rose, branch librarian of the th Street branch of the NewYork Public Library later renamed the Countee Cullen branch , was looking for a bilingual assistant and offered the position to Elisa. When Elisa's husband refused to let his bride work, Elisa persuaded Pura to accept the position. Initially, Belpre was assigned to work in both the adult and children's departments.

It was in the course in storytelling taught by Mary Gould Davis that she first told a folktale heard from her grandmother in Puerto Rico about the courtship of the pretty cockroach Martina and the gallant mouse Perez. Belpre yearned to tell the tales she remembered from childhood, but couldn't find them in any books in the library's collections. At that time it was standard library practice to tell stories only found in books, but Belpre's folkloric story made such a deep impression on Davis and on her fellow classmates that she was given special permission to tell her unpublished tales at the branch story hours.

In Belpre was assigned to the th Street branch in southwest Harlem, then a predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood. In her efforts to reach the Puerto Rican community she introduced bilingual story hours and obtained permission to allow the parents of the children to attend. The parents sat at the back of the story-hour room. Noting the children's enthusiastic response to a puppet show performed by Leonardo Cimino, brother of the children's librarian Maria Cimino, Belpre created her own juvenile puppet theater and began using puppets in her storytelling.

Belpre practiced outreach long before it became popular in the s. She told stories and talked about library services at churches, community centers, neighborhood organizations, and schools. She initiated the library's celebration of El Dia de Reyes the Feast of the Three Kings , which is observed on the sixth of January in Puerto Rico and throughout Hispanic America with Spanish cuentos stories , bailes dances , and musica music. In Frederic Warne published Perez and Martina: A Portorican Folk Tale. Photograph courtesy of the NewYork Public Library. There she continued her bilingual story hours, reading clubs, puppet theater, and outreach programs, and helped develop the library's Spanish-language collections.

In Belpre presented a paper, "Children: During her visit to Cincinnati she met the conductor, concert violinist, and musicologist Clarence Cameron White. Belpre married White in December , and took a leave of absence from the library to travel with her husband and to write. After the death of her husband in , Belpre returned to the New York Public Library to fill the newly created position of Spanish children's specialist. Belpre engaged her listeners with her quiet but animated manner of telling, her expressive eyes, and her warm smile.

Her writing continued and in the coming years she published Juan Bobo and the Queen's Necklace: In addition, she translated several English books into Spanish, made recordings, and compiled with Mary K. Conwell Libros en Espanol: For the next decade she visited community centers and worked with neighborhood organizations. Once again, she incorporated puppetry into her storytelling. She designed "a collapsible puppet theater that was lightweight and easily transportable throughout the city" and "instructed the library staff in the arts of designing costumes, creating theatrical props, selecting appropriate story lines, preparing scripts, and acting with puppets.

Beginning in she began presenting puppet shows at El Museo del Barrio, assisted by the museum staff. Belpre designed the theater and made all of the puppets. A staff member described the puppet theater as unique in that it was constructed like a kiosco, and in the future will be transformed into a bohio in keeping with Puerto Rican culture. In this way the children are involved in the changes and different movements necessary in order to bring the puppets to life. This however, does not at all distract the children; in fact it seems to make it all the more interesting for them since they become involved with the little intricacies that make the puppets function.

Wherever she went she told her Puerto Rican folktales and fostered a greater awareness of Puerto Rican culture. Koch, then mayor of NewYork City. Belpre was honored for "her contribution to the Spanish-speaking community. Through her books and her storytelling art, Belpre left a legacy of rich Puerto Rican folklore that can be enjoyed by all children today.

As indicated earlier, during the political and social upheaval of the s librarians reached out into the community with a fervor matched only by their pioneer counterparts at the turn of the century. They held stair-step story hours in urban ghettos and worked with Head Start teachers.

Some of the children who attended these programs came from cultures rich in the oral tradition. A greater number were born into families that had neither an oral nor a print tradition. Librarians sought simpler storybooks to use with preschoolers who were not used to being read to at home. Music, especially the singing of folk songs, was added to the story-hour program. Story hours became less literary, less structured. Film programs and multimedia story hours became increasingly popular with children who were growing up with television.

White's research while director of Harvard University's preschool project from to demonstrated the importance of interaction between children and their caregivers during the first three years of life, and that interaction's impact on language development, later cognitive functioning, personality, and social behavior. Other researchers, among them Howard Gardner and Brian Sutton-Smith, were exploring the young child's sense of story. Jean Piaget, the eminent Swiss psychologist who received recognition in Europe in the s for his theories of cognitive development, was becoming more widely known to Americans through translations and interpretations of his writings.

Piaget considered assimilation and accommodation to be the two most important processes for human functioning. The process of assimilation involves abstracting information from the outside world and putting the information into the organizing schemes that represent what the child already knows.

Accommodation is the process by which the child modifies these schemes to fit his or her stage of developing knowledge. Betty Weeks, an early-childhood educator at the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois, believes that listening to stories helps children with these processes. After listening to the story of Persephone, on a brisk March day with a tinge of spring in the air, a fiveyear-old remarked, "Mrs. Weeks, I don't think Persephone is with her mother quite yet.

The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, published in , also served to support storytelling to children. Though many adults could not accept Bettelheim's Freudian interpretations of familiar folk tales, his book persuaded them that fairy tales play an important role in a child's development. In response to the growing evidence that young children were capable of responding to stories on a more sophisticated level than formerly thought, children's librarians began experimenting with toddler storytimes—storytelling programs designed for children from 18 months to 3 years of age, accompanied by a caregiver.

At the same time, the noticeable lack of storybooks appropriate for toddlers led publishers to bring out attractive board books by talented authors and illustrators. Effect of Professional Storytellers on Library Story Hours After attending the National Storytelling Association's first storytelling festival in , cousins Connie Regan and Barbara Freeman decided to leave their positions as librarians in Chattanooga to become traveling storytellers.

Since , thousands of librarians, teachers, and children have heard this popular duo, known as "The Folktellers.

Probably not since the Middle Ages have there been so many professional storytellers! Their audiences include adults and children, and their performances are entertainment-oriented. In an interview in The Horn Book Magazine Augusta Baker expressed her concern over the current trend toward the use of personal stories in storytelling, popularized by many professional storytellers, and the emphasis on performance. Anne Carroll Moore, one of the earliest advocates of storytelling in the library, told personal anecdotes in her informal story hours at Pratt Library.

Fewer opportunities especially for older children to hear traditional tales is cause for concern. Even before the rise of a professional class of storytellers, librarians had changed their priorities from story hours for older boys and girls to storytimes for younger children. Almost all public libraries offer picture-book programs for preschoolers and children in the primary grades, and 93 percent of the librarians responding to Ann Carlson's survey in the early s reported that they offer parent and child literature-sharing programs for children under the age of three.

Only a small number of libraries offer story hours for children over eight years of age on a regular weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly basis. The tendency is to invite a professional storyteller to visit the school or public library on a special-occasion basis and to hold an occasional story hour in between visits or to read aloud to the children in between special events. While guest storytellers have always been an inspirational part of the library tradition—one has only to think of Marie Shedlock, Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen, and Ruth Sawyer—the library storytelling program was never dependent upon guest storytellers.

Storytelling should not be limited to "special occasions" when the budget allows for a professional teller. Children need to hear stories each and every day. Practically speaking, librarians cannot offer storytelling programs on a daily basis, but they can encourage parents to read aloud or to tell stories to their children for 15 minutes a day; they can encourage teachers to read aloud or to tell stories in their classrooms for 15 minutes a day; they can train teenagers to read aloud or to tell stories to younger children in the library; they can conduct storytelling workshops for day-care staff and other adults who work with children; they can use storytelling techniques in book talks and tell stories during class visits.

The whole-language movement has made teachers more aware of children's literature and they are eager to learn effective ways of sharing literature with children. Folklorists consider the physical and social environment in which the story is told essential for an understanding of its meaning, and the storyteller's voice, gestures, and interaction with the listeners are as important as the story itself.

In this respect the librarian-storyteller's presentation is closer to that of the traditionalist than to that of the professional storyteller where the emphasis is as much, or even more so, on the performance as on the story The traditionalist tells stories absorbed from a storytelling community while the librarian-storyteller usually tells from a background in storytelling literature, though he or she may combine elements of both traditions. It was said of Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen, "when she told a story, it was like watching a tree grow; you felt it coming from such roots!

As with a traditional audience, children are not passive listeners, and they have a good ear for the spoken word since they still live in a predominately oral milieu. They do demand sincerity and openness, and they tend to suffer honest fools gladly. Like a traditional audience they do not stop to ask, "Was that profound and meaningful, or just amusing?

As the renowned librarian-storyteller Frances Clarke Sayers exclaimed, "It [storytelling] is a deathless art, lively and diverse, which like music, refreshes and revives those whom it touches even in its farthest reaches. Views and Reviews of Children's Books Doubleday, , p. Jasmine Britton, "Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen: Moore, My Roads to Childhood, p. Virginia Haviland, Ruth Sawyer Walck, , p. Beryl Robinson, "Ruth Sawyer: Hazeltine Wilson, , pp. The section on Pura Belpre is based on material in this article and on the author's personal recollections. Pura Belpre, "I wish to be like Johnny Appleseed.

Lillian Lopez, Interview by Julio L. Mary Segarra Diaz, Quimbamba: Bilingual Education Quarterly January A Biography Atheneum, , p. Kay Stone, "'To Ease the Heart': Sickels, and Frances Clarke Sayers, 4th rev. Houghton, , p. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious.

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And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read. Haley1 What is its purpose? What are its values? In an attempt to define storytelling, participants at a conference sponsored by the National Storytelling Association in spoke of "oral narration," "communication," "transmission of images," "revelation," "co-creation," "creating order out of chaos," and "worship.

Storytelling is not recitation, nor is it acting. Lewis Carroll called stories "love gifts";2 contemporary author Jean Little calls them "invitations to joy. Storytelling brings to the listeners heightened awareness—a sense of wonder, of mystery, of reverence for life. This nurturing of the spirit-self is the primary purpose of storytelling, and all other uses and effects are secondary.

Storytelling is a sharing experience. When we tell, we show our willingness to be vulnerable, to expose our deepest feelings, our values. That kind of nakedness that says we care about what we are relating invites children to listen with open minds and hearts. Enjoying a story together creates a sense of community. It establishes a happy relationship between teller and listener, drawing people closer to one another, adult to child, child to child.

This rapport carries over into other areas as well, for children tend to have confidence in the person who tells stories well. Library storytelling grew out of a desire to introduce children to the pleasures of literature, to excite children about books and reading.

This viewpoint was eloquently expressed by Elizabeth Nesbitt: Story-telling provides the opportunity to interpret for the child life forces which are beyond his immediate experience, and so to prepare him for life itself. It gives the teller the chance to emphasize significance rather than incident. It is through the medium of interpretation that all of us, adults and children, come to genuine appreciation Story-telling, rightly done, is such an art. With so many children's books in print, it is possible for a child to read a great number without reading even one worthwhile book.

Through storytelling and reading aloud we can introduce books of quality that otherwise might be missed. Too, children are often ready for the literary experience a book offers before they are able to read it on their own. Charlottes Web is the classic example of a book that can be enjoyed on several levels. Reluctant readers, who may never read fiction or fantasy, can also have a share in literature through the experience of hearing stories told or read aloud.

In our multicultural, multilingual classrooms and libraries, there will be children who are experiencing difficulty making the transition from oral to written narrative, as well as children from homes where books and reading are not valued. Storytelling can provide a transition, a bridge to reading. Storytelling allows these children to lose themselves in a story in the same way that fluent readers lose themselves in a book.

And because the words go directly from the ear to the brain, story listening is an invaluable experience for beginning readers, reluctant readers, or children who have difficulty comprehending what they are reading. From listening to stories, children develop a richer vocabulary. A kindergarten teacher who was telling "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and ThreeEyes" to her class for the second time said the mother was very "angry.

The storyteller works with words. The sound of words, the way an author puts words together to form a rhythmic pattern, pleases the ear and evokes a physical response from the young child. Research indicates that there is a connection between the development of motor ability and language competence. That there is such a relationship comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever held an infant and shared aloud Mother Goose rhymes. The young child responds to the rollicking verses with rhythmic movements of the body. The enjoyment of sound and rhythm is enhanced by the sensuous pleasure of close body contact.

But Mother Goose rhymes have more to offer than rhythm and repetition. A Mother Goose rhyme is a minidrama. The old woman must persuade her obstinate pig to go over the stile so that she can get home. She appeals to quite ordinary objects—a stick, fire, water, rope— and to common animals—a dog, ox, rat, cat—for help. These usually inanimate objects and dumb animals act with wills of their own, entering into the conflict.

The conflict is resolved when the old woman fills the cat's request for a saucer of milk, thus starting a sequence of events that culminates in the pig's jumping over the stile. Children find pleasure in the way an author uses words to create mood, to evoke response, to create images that please the inward eye, as in the following three excerpts: Whenever fairies are sad they wear white.

And this year, which was long ago, was the year men were tearing down all the old zigzag rail fences. Now those old zigzag fences were beautiful for the fairies because a hundred fairies could sit on one rail and thousands and thousands of them could sit on the zigzags and sing pla-sizzy pla-sizzy, softer than an eye wink, softer than a baby's thumb, all on a moonlight summer night. And they found out that year was going to be the last year of the zigzag rail fences.

It made them sorry and sad, and when they are sorry and sad they wear white. So they picked the wonderful white morning glories running along the zigzag rail fences and made them into little wristlets and wore those wristlets the next year to show they were sorry and sad. Wind would visit Mrs. Water, and they would spend the day talking. Mostly they enjoyed talking about their children. They can go anywhere in the world.

They can stroke the grass softly, and they can knock down a tree. They can go fast or they can go slowly. Nobody has children like mine. Not many have seen her, because she knows all the tricks; but if you go to Caburn at the new moon, you may catch a glimpse of a tiny bent figure, no bigger than a child, skipping all by itself in its sleep, and hear a gay little voice, like the voice of a dancing yellow leaf, singing: Children experience the whole of a piece of literature, uninterrupted by questions or discussion.

If the stories they hear are worth listening to, they are eager to learn the key that unlocks the symbols. Studies of children who read early indicate that hearing stories told or read aloud in early childhood is a common factor. When children are enjoying a story, their faces express interest, curiosity, and delight. Photograph courtesy of the Richland County Public Library. The child identifies fully with the characters and episodes in the stories and integrates them with situations encountered in the remainder of his working day, even as he incorporates names, events, rhythms, melodies, sounds, even entire passages into his night-time monologues.

The central role played by story hearing and storytelling in the lives of most young children leads me to speculate that the narrative impulse plays an important role in organizing the child's world; and the auditory and vocalizing systems may require a certain amount of stimulation which, though available from many sources, seems particularly well satisfied by literary experience. As children listen they create the scenes, the action, the characters.

Storytelling, 3 Sub edition

The ability to visualize, to fantasize, is the basis of creative imagination. It also appears to have a positive effect on social and cognitive development. Children with a strong predisposition toward imaginative play seem to empathize with other children more readily. This is of special significance to educators who fear that cognitive skills may have been emphasized in the past at the expense of affective development.

The noted Russian author and specialist in children's language and literature, Kornei Chukovsky, believed the goal of storytelling to be "fostering in the child, at whatever cost, compassion and humaneness—this miraculous ability of man to be disturbed by another being's misfortunes, to feel joy about another being's happiness, to experience another's fate as one's own. Bruno Bettelheim, in his book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, discusses the role of fairy tales in helping children master the psychological problems of growing up: A child needs to understand what is going on within his conscious self so that he can also cope with that which goes on in his unconscious.

He can achieve this understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of his unconscious, but by becoming familiar with it through spinning out daydreams—ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to unconscious pressures.

By doing this, the child fits unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which then enable him to deal with that content. It is here that fairy tales have unequaled value, because they offer new dimensions to the child's imagination which would be impossible for him to discover as truly on his own. Although folktale characters tend to be one-dimensional which makes it easier for young children to distinguish between good and evil and other opposites , what a variety of characters live in the tales—beauties and monsters, simpletons and wise folk, scoundrels and those without guile.

What a wide range of human emotion—jealousy, love, hatred, contentment, greed, cunning, anger, compassion! When a young person asked P. Travers,"How can I learn to be a woman? For Grimm's—or any other collection of traditional tales or myths—is a mine of feminine lore. Some parents worry about the violence in many folktales. In today's society even young children are exposed to violence on television or in real life. It may be of some comfort to know that psychologists believe the chants and rhythms in folktales contain the violence, enabling children to handle it.

The words "Once upon a time. Historically, storytelling has been used to educate as well as to entertain. Meifang Zhang, a teacher of English at Shanxi University, Shanxi Province, China, and a former exchange scholar-researcher at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, observed that the ancient tales of her native land encouraged traditional Chinese values—respect for elders, obedience to parents, precedence of the group over the individual, and conformity to rules— whereas the new writers for children encourage individual initiative and performance.

The rationale for such stories is that modern China needs bold thinkers. Storytelling is a way of keeping alive the cultural heritage of a people. It is akin to the folk dance and the folk song in preserving the traditions of a country for the foreign-born child and of building appreciation of another culture for the native-born child. Storytellers find that whenever they tell a story from the cultural background of their listeners, there is an immediate excitement.

There is need for awareness that each group of people has its own special traditions and customs. There is need that respectful recognition be given these special traditions and customs. There is need for acceptance of these differences. There is tragic need for loving communion between children and children, children and adults, adults and adults—between group and group. Among various nations, similar stories are found, but they assume a variety of forms according to the culture in which they developed. Paul Bunyan is related to Ti-Jean.

Over years ago the French colonists brought the Ti-Jean stories to America; they soon became French-Canadian tales, and now they are part of the spoken tradition of the country. Glooscap was the hero-trickster of a great mythology shared by the Native Americans of Canada, Maine, and Massachusetts, and these stories show a likeness to both Norse and European folktales. Research Update There is much anecdotal information about the values of storytelling to children but scant "hard" research. A literature search of doctoral dissertations from January through March turned up dissertations on storytelling, of which approximately 25 percent related to storytelling to children.

Most of these came out of schools of education. Educational research has tended to focus on children's ability to recall and retell a story accurately. We need to back up our delightful anecdotal stories about children and storytelling with sound research, keeping in mind the principles set forth by Howard Rosen.

Rosen calls much research on memory and comprehension of stories the "misguided work of'scientific' ineptitudes" and proposes that researchers in this area follow four principles: That it matters which stories we work with and that remembering and comprehending are especially related to the power of a story to engage with the world of feeling and thought in the listener; 2.

That we should ask why we should remember a story and not simply what we remember; 4. That the most constructive way of examining the hold a story has is for it to be presented in a propitious context and to be retold in an equally propitious one. First, early storybook reading by parents includes aspects of both oral and written language. Second, as children gain experience, storybook reading becomes more like conventional conceptualizations of written language.

Third, children's earliest interactions with storybooks are mediated by an interactive adult and gradually become the performance of a text-as-monologue by the adult for the listening and observing child. Children learn the nature of the book and of print—what Don Holdaway calls "a literary set for learning to read. They learn about "wordspace-word" arrangement and punctuation. Most important, they learn that the squiggly marks on the page have meaning.

At first, nonreading children "read" the pictures. Gradually, they learn that the words tell the story. In an experimental study conducted in a kindergarten of the Haifa Israel School District, Arab children—who spoke in a local dialect Ila'amiyah that has no written form—were read to in literary Arabic during the last 15 to 20 minutes of each day over a period of five months while children in the control group were given a language development program on listening comprehension. Then the children in each group were individually tested on listening comprehension and a picture storytelling task.

The children who had been read to performed better than those in the control group, not only in listening comprehension but in their knowledge of story structure their stories were more cohesive, with a clear beginning, middle, and ending and use of a richer vocabulary. When young children act out a story, they more easily identify with the characters in the story.

Viewing a story on film seems least effective for recall of content. However, a more recent study by Laurene Brown found significant differences in what children took away with them from a story presented in two different media. Children ages 6, 7, 9, and 10 either watched A Story, A Story on a television monitor or heard it read aloud from the picture book. In retelling the story, the children who saw the television version used more active verbs. The book audience seemed more attentive to the sounds of language and retained more of the author's vocabulary in their retellings.

For example, they called the characters by their book names, "Anansi" and "Osebo," whereas the viewers called them simply "man" and "the leopard. Brown's study indicates that the oral medium helps develop language and the skills requisite to reading. The television medium, on the other hand, develops "visual literacy, skill at reading moving pictures, vividness of mental imagery and ability to remember picture information and to produce images themselves. Brown, an educational psychologist, disagrees, and takes a positive approach toward both media.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each medium in literacy development is valuable for librarians and teachers. Huck, author of Children's Literature in the Elementary School and a pioneer in bringing children's literature into the classroom, cites two studies of fifth graders. In the first study, the fifth graders were given 45 minutes to read each day and 15 minutes to share what they had read, in pairs or small groups of three or four. In the second study, another group of fifth graders averaged four minutes a day reading.

Children in the first study read an average of 45 books each, with a range of 22 to books. Huck does not say how many books the children in the second study read, but indicates the number was very low. If they are not reading outside school and many are not , then we must reorder our priorities and give them time to read books of their own choosing inside school. Traditionally, librarians read a story straight through in order to maintain its literary integrity.

Nursery school teachers, on the other hand, often interact with children during read-aloud sessions by asking questions and encouraging comments. When parents read aloud, they hold their children on their laps, focus attention on the book, and interrupt the reading to talk about what is happening. The parent's interruptions occur at places in the story where the child might not have the experience required to understand.

The parent fills in, asks questions, or "scaffolds" the learning. The child's questions, quizzical looks, or misstatements show the adult what the child needs to know in order to understand the story. What we have learned from the research about the importance of interacting with the child has encouraged librarians to use more participation stories with younger children. Young children enjoy joining in the refrains, and it sharpens their listening and memory skills.

Children can be encouraged to use language by discussing stories, but there is a danger in the kind of questions asked. Chambers suggests openended questions, such as "Tell me about the parts you like most," "Tell me about the parts you didn't like," "Was there anything that puzzled you? Danoff also asks the children if they remember any special words, and how the story makes them feel.

Such questions are much more appropriate than asking "Where was Cinderella when she lost her slipper? The child who can make mental images from the words on the page is better able to understand and remember what has been read. He is able to construct inferences and to make predictions. Olga Nelson found that after listening to a told story, fourth-grade students in three separate classrooms reported images that were "clear, vivid, varied, complex, multilayered, and interactive.

Visual images were reported most often, but the children also experienced auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory images. An activity that deepens a child's appreciation of a story is appropriate, but too often activities are tacked on to provide a learning experience. To tell the story "The Blind Boy and the Loon" and then to have the children construct igloos of flour and salt or to talk about the coloration of the loon is not what the story is about.

Having the children dramatize the story might be appropriate, however. Many stories lend themselves to creative dramatics, and younger children especially enjoy this activity. You might have the children retell the story to a partner or in groups of three or four. Or you might invite the children to paint their favorite character or scene, or to express visually that is, through art how the story makes them feel.

One of the most enthusiastic promoters of reading and storytelling is Caroline Feller Bauer. Her books see Appendix are a treasury of activities that help children make the story their own. As a visiting storyteller, you may be asked by the teacher or staff person how to help the children build on the storytelling experience. Storyteller Doug Lipman suggests leaving a list of appropriate follow-up activities. For example, the teacher or staff person might tell or read aloud a variant of the tale, other stories from the same culture, or another story by the same author.

Lipman recommends having older children and young adults analyze the story by focusing on one or more of the following elements: After this activity, the students might try to create a new story by keeping the plot but changing the setting and characters, or by keeping the theme and characters but changing the plot. Or the students might make up further adventures for one of the characters in the story Do not feel you must engage the children in some activity after a story. They may call upon the experience later.

There may be no need for external response at the moment. Reflective journals, putting the story into writing, remembering the story at a later date; all are modes of responding that help children build a story frame. The Report of the Commission on Reading, one hour a day is devoted to reading instruction in the average classroom. Of that time, up to 70 percent is spent on worksheet-type activities that require only a perfunctory level of reading.

The report concluded that the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. In fact, parents and teachers have discovered that many children go through a stage in learning to read when they refuse to read themselves because they fear the reading aloud will stop!

Hearing stories read aloud gives children "a sense of story. They learn patterns of language and develop an understanding of plot and characterization. This helps them with their own writing. A former Rutgers student, Tina-Jill Gordon, explored the dynamic between teachers telling stories and the written narrative responses to these stories by children who are beginning writers.

During the nineweek study, Gordon discovered that children "recall many details of the stories which they hear via storytelling" and that "telling oral literature stories to children inspires them to write about the stories, to imitate the stories, and to use the stories as a trigger for creating their own stories. In her memoir, One Writers Beginnings, Welty recalls: Listening children know stories are there.

When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole. Of Winnie-the-Pooh he wrote: It was the discovery that words make another place, a place to escape to with your spirit alone. Every child entranced by reading stumbles on that blissful experience sooner or later. Once you are hooked on telling stories, reading aloud may seem less satisfying, but reading aloud is a good way to introduce long stories that have complex sentence structure or more description than action, stories with wordplay that might slip past the children, literary fairy tales that must be word perfect such as Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories , or that require more time to learn than you have time to give, or chapter stories.

Read aloud from books that children might miss because the text is too difficult for them to read on their own at the time they are interested in the story. By reading a short selection or chapter, you may entice a few of the children into reading the entire book for themselves. Choose a variety of story types. Younger children like stories about animals, humorous tales, and stories about children who are like themselves. Do not waste your time and the children's time by reading ordinary, dull, uninspiring, vocabulary-controlled stories. Read only what you enjoy, so that your enjoyment is transferred to the listeners.

The length of the material should be suitable to the maturity of the group. It is best to choose stories that can be read in one sitting if the children are young or if you find yourself with a different group of children each time you read, as often happens in a public library. Whole books can be read as serials, a chapter or two at a time. Myths, legends, hero tales, and tall tales lend themselves well to reading aloud. Poetry almost demands to be read aloud.

Reading a poem aloud catches elements that may be missed when the poem is read silently. A sampling of some favorite titles for reading aloud are listed in the Appendix. Stories to Read Aloud by Jim Trelease. Is There an Art to Reading Aloud? Reading aloud is an art and, like storytelling, requires careful selection and preparation. Read the material aloud by yourself to become aware of the rhythms and mood as well as the plot and characters. Know your material so well that you do not struggle over words and ideas and can look frequently at your listeners in order to involve them in the story.

Read in a natural voice but with expression and feeling. Vocal variety will keep your listeners interested. Strengthen your technical equipment—pleasant, flexible voice; clear enunciation; skillful pacing. The timing and the pause are as important in reading aloud as in storytelling. This is storytelling with the book. The reader appreciates, interprets, and calls attention to what the author has created with as much imaginative skill as possible. A hell of a lot of animals were harmed in the making of this adventure. Read more Read less. Amazon Global Store International products have separate terms, are sold from abroad and may differ from local products, including fit, age ratings, and language of product, labeling or instructions.

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Very funny book taking the Jurassic Park movie as tongue in cheek, with the idea of what if the dinosaurs were smarter than expected and if the humans were a little stupider than expected. I have used his shareware software for years and it is of very good quality and performance. Steven Rimmer's biting satire continuously kept me laughing and sharing verbally with friends. Imagine talking dinosaurs that politely ask for a Mars bar, or correct your English and admonish you with a gem like this.

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