Storytelling has its public side and with World Book Day 2013 coming up on March 7th, it’s interesting to note how – it always happens in my experience – the number of storytelling invitations from schools goes up. I wish schools were as keen to have storytelling regularly all the year round. Yet it’s great to see the association between books and storytelling being made.

The private side

But storytelling has its private side too. I mentioned family bonds last week. On Thursday this week, I got a fresh experience of how magically these can start to arise.

Thursday was Valentine’s Day. At about 3 p.m. I went round to the home of the former wife of one of my former long-term foster-sons. If that seems a bit complicated, it doesn’t matter. She and her family are still very much part of my world and I’d promised her 6-year-old granddaughter I’d be round to read her a story. The little girl loves books and stories and is an attentive listener. She loves talking about the stories and joining in. It’s great.

This time, as well as some books the little girl probably hadn’t seen before – including Sunshine by Jan Ormerod who sadly recently passed away – I took the wherewithal for making some Valentine hearts like the one I wrote about last week.

What happened? Not at all what I’d expected. Two more grandchildren also arrived to visit, neither of whom I’d seen for some time. One is a little girl aged just three. The other is her brother aged five who, last time I saw him, was a bit of a handful. Yet even then I’d noticed how engaged he’d become when I told them Mrs Wiggle and Mrs Waggle. Now I was in for a bigger surprise. (more…)

Where to begin? First, because St Valentine’s Day happens next week, I’m offering some background information on the name of the day together with the suggestion that you bend your mind to looking up a love story to tell. Plus – as you can see from my photos – I’ve got a suggestion of something to make which could form a really great prop for your story, not least because it could also lead to some enjoyable craft work on the part of your audience.

Equally importantly, I have a couple of thoughts related to two great comments on last week’s blog that arrived during the course of this week. Both are from people I know and admire. Both show the kind of passion for storytelling and its effects that, in my view, has a much wider bearing on how we all approach our lives.

St Valentine’s Day

First,  St Valentine’s Day. I’ve been looking up some background. Did you know – I didn’t! – that St Valentine was a priest of Rome who was martyred for succouring persecuted Christians? Why his saint’s day, 14 February, has become a symbol of romantic love is perhaps connected with the love he showed his fellow human beings.

But because of the link between the days, it appears that St Valentine’s Day also reaches much further back into the story of ancient Rome. There, the festival of the Lupercalia used to occur around 15 February. It involved the wild rampaging of youths on the streets and also the giving of presents.

 Zestful energy? Hormones surging? The mating of human beings? It all seems to be part of St. Valentine’s Day. Hence also another old association – with the mating of birds.

A Valentine Heart

Now here’s that prop that you can make. (I actually don’t love the term ‘prop’.)

As in the photo to the left, cut out two paper shapes that look like small, tall loaves of bread. The ones in my photo are 80 mm wide and, excluding the top rounded bit, 80 mm long. Your shapes could be bigger or smaller according to your preference.

Next, as on the right, cut up towards the rounded part of each paper to make six separated legs. With a larger shape, you could choose to have more strips or, with a smaller shape, fewer. Experiment is all. Next: (more…)

The other day I heard that David the cuckoo is on his way home. David is one of several cuckoos the British Trust for Ornithology are tracking in the cause of helping with dangerously declining cuckoo numbers. David has been wintering in the middle of Africa. He’s started his long flight back from the Congo about a week earlier than the first of last year’s cuckoos. To the BTO, it’s the first sign of Spring. 

Signs of Spring?

I await any signs of Spring in Storytelling in Education. Like numerous other storytellers I’ve spoken to, I fear the country is stuck in a very long drear Winter as far as storytelling in schools is concerned. Storyteller visits to schools have suffered. So has storytelling training for teachers. OK, there are still the big events. National Storytelling Week has just been taking place and lots of exciting events have happened inside and outside of schools. Next there’ll be World Book Day which this year is on March 7th. On that day I’ll be working in Kensington Palace with a group of parents who want to learn to tell stories to children.

But as previous readers of this blog will know, my concern is that storytelling be not only for special occasions but embedded in children’s lives. In Primary schools and Nursery schools, it is of particular importance because it gives children such improved confidence with language and also the knowledge that they all have an imagination, which is such an essential skill for life as well as for education.

Back-up for these thoughts came last week in a letter from Jean Edmiston, one of Scotland’s leading storytellers and a long-term colleague and friend of mine.  Jean has worked widely and over a long period of years in schools, with community groups and in performance. Her letter gives her thoughts on why storytelling in education is of such value. It includes insightful references to adults and children she’s worked with.

Jean Edmiston writes:

Dear Mary

At the end of last year I visited the local village primary school to tell stories.

As there are only 26 children in the whole school, ages 5-11, I suggested they should all join in with the first story, with the older children lending their voices to the sound effects necessary to rid the villagers in the story of a scary mud monster. The story ends with the people celebrating their victory by making fires that sparkle like all the stars in the sky.

The younger children then chose to stay on for the longer stories – and 45 minutes became over an hour with everyone enjoying the stories. And I so enjoyed telling the stories and being reminded how much delight children take from hearing stories told.

A few days after this I met a parent in the village shop – and the talk was not the usual talk about the weather but about the stars and stories of how they came to be. (more…)

The evenings are getting darker and I’m starting a new series of postings. Wintering Out is the title and it starts with Dark, Dark Tale, a Story Chant that’s great with children and also with adults as a piece of fun in workshops. Next week and in the run-up to Christmas, I’ll bring other seasonal tales and chants into the mix.

Storytelling in Education: good news and bad news 

But first, to continue my recent theme of Storytelling in Education, let me give you my week’s good news and bad news. Both came in the same email from a Literacy Adviser in Pembrokeshire for whom I’ve done loads of work in the past, including a series of extended teacher courses. On one of those courses, now quite a few years ago, I told the Pembrokeshire legend of Skomar Oddy and I remember how much it appealed to one of the teachers. The children in her class  loved this particular story and she based lots of writing and art work on it.  Well, my Literacy Adviser’s email told me that when she recently went into that school, there was a whole new fresh display on the Skomar Oddy story. This was music to my ears. It shows that teachers who fall in  love with storytelling can make really good use of it year after year and that a good story never goes out of fashion.

The bad news was that, in these current times, there’s no longer any central funding in Pembrokeshire for the kind of storytelling in education work that I did so much of there. It’ll now be down to individual schools. That’s it – at least until people realize once more how important it is to fund this kind of work! Another worrying and retrograde step.

Dark, Dark Tale: a Story Chant for Winter

Once upon a time there was a dark dark wood.
In the dark dark wood, there was a dark dark path.
Along the dark dark path, there was a dark dark gate.
(Shall we go in through the gate?)

Behind the dark dark gate was a dark dark garden.
In the dark dark garden, there was a dark dark house.
In the dark dark house, there was a dark dark door.
(Shall we go in through the door?)

Behind the dark dark door, there was a dark dark hall.
Along the dark dark hall, there was a dark dark room.
In the dark dark room, there was a dark dark box.
(Shall we open it up?)

Oh my goodness! What was that? (more…)

Desert Island is a marvellous and deceptively simple game that was developed by myself and storytelling colleague, Karen Tovell. Karen and I made it up for one of our famous Drill Hall workshops. These were monthly day-long workshops which began in 1986 and went on for 10 whole years, moving in latter years to the Holborn Centre for the Performing Arts.

We covered a great deal of ground in those workshops. An enormous number of stories got told both by ourselves and participants too. We also developed a huge number of exercises and activities that enabled people to explore these stories, discovering their hidden depths and using them as take-off points for creating new tales. (By the way, one person who used regularly to come to the workshops sent me a great email this week saying he still uses some of the ideas and routines we did there. Any more of you out there?) (more…)

Next Saturday’s blog will start a new series. So far, I haven’t decided the subject. Anything you’d like to see? Please jot a note in the Comment box at the end of this blog and I’ll try to respond.

Next Thursday, March 1st, it’s going to be World Book Day, St David’s Day and my next WIPs meeting all on the same day. World Book Day speaks for itself – a day to celebrate the book, it’s usually a busy one for authors and storytellers. St David’s Day, in case you don’t know already, is the national day of Wales. It marks the death of our Patron Saint. As for WIPs, that’s a group of us who meet every couple of months to present something creative we’ve each been working on. Among us are singers, pianists, an oboe player, writers, a composer of music and a sculptor. Next Thursday, I’m planning to do a story set in Wales.

Here meantime is another Welsh story, the last in my series for younger children and an ideal story for telling next week.

The Door In The Mountain

Once there was a girl who loved singing and running. One day when she was playing hide and seek with her friends, she ran away from the rest to look for a place to hide and came across a door in the mountain. The door was ajar and she went inBehind the door was a tunnel and at the end of the tunnel was sunlight. So Betsy Bankhouse – for that was her name – crept through the tunnel until she came out on the other side and there she discovered she was in a new world that she’d never seen before.

As she looked round, Betsy saw a big blue lake and in the middle of the lake she saw an island. She desperately wanted to go there and when she got down to the edge of the lake, she saw exactly what she needed. It was a boat.

So Betsy got in and rowed that boat across the water till she came to the island. As she started climbing out, she noticed there were lots of little people looking out at her from the reeds. They said, ‘Welcome to our island, Betsy Bank-house.’ ‘That’s funny,’ thought Betsy, ‘how did they know my name?’ (more…)

This week’s story is another of my favourites. It’s for the upper age-range of younger children, not the very young ones. (See my comments at the end of the blog.) 

Mr and Mrs Hak-Tak

Mr and Mrs Hak-Tak were very poor. They didn’t have much of anything at all – not much food, not much money, not much time to rest. They both used to work very hard.

One day, Mr Hak-Tak was digging over the piece of land where he always grew his vegetables. Suddenly, his spade hit something hard in the earth. He heard it! CLANG!

‘That’s funny,’ said Mr Hak-Tak. ‘I’ve dug this ground a lot of times. But I’ve never heard a clang before.’

Mr Hak-Tak was VERY puzzled. He dug down until he discovered what had made the noise. He dug it out. It was a big metal pot – a VERY big metal pot.

‘That’s strange,’ said Mr Hak-Tak. ‘I’ll take it home to show Mrs Hak-Tak.’

But when Mr Hak-Tak picked up the pot, he couldn’t hold it at the same time as his purse. So he put the pot down, put his purse inside it, then picked up the pot and carried it home.

Mrs Hak-Tak was astonished. ‘Where did you get that pot?’ she said. When Mr Hak-Tak explained, she was even more surprised. ‘Well, it looks like a very nice pot,’ she said. ‘It could come in useful. So I’ll give it a clean.’

It was when Mrs Hak-Tak started cleaning the pot that she noticed Mr Hak-Tak’s purse inside it. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I put it there to carry it home. I’ll take it out.’

But when Mrs Hak-Tak went back to the pot, she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Inside was Mr Hak-Tak’s purse! (more…)

The Elves and the Shoemaker

My choice as the first story in this series is one you probably know – The Elves and the Shoemaker. To illustrate it and the points that come after, I’ve selected some random pictures of shoes from my photo archive along with a couple I’ve taken this week.

Here’s the story: 

A poor shoemaker was down on his luck. He had only enough leather left in his workshop to make one final pair of shoes. He didn’t know how he and his wife would survive after that. But before going to bed, he cut out the leather thinking he would sew that last pair of shoes in the morning.

That night, while the shoemaker and his wife were in bed, two naked elves came to the shoemaker’s workshop and sewed and finished the pair of shoes.

In the morning, the shoemaker was almost speechless. WHO could POSSIBLY have made the shoes? And they were SO beautifully made, not a stitch was out of place. When a customer came into his shop that morning, he definitely wanted those shoes – and paid a lot of money for them. So now the shoemaker had enough money to buy leather for TWO pairs of shoes. (more…)

Stars are the focus of this week’s blog – not the celebrity sort but the ones in the  sky. They are especially worthy of attention at this time of the year. The bright star in the East plays a vital part in the story of Jesus for those with Christian beliefs. And for all those who bother to look up in the sky on clear nights, I’m sure you’ll agree the stars look especially bright in contrast with December’s darkness. The longer I look up at them, the more they seem to draw me upwards into the sky to join them. They expand my sense of time and space.

Star Apple

The Star in the Apple is a much-told tale. I first heard it from my storyteller friend, Sally Tonge, and I loved it. You may know it already. It gets told and written in all kinds of ways with all kinds of different details. Just look it up on the Internet and you’ll see some significantly differing versions. But what I love most is that everyone’s version depends on the same central fact – so amazing to children and adults who never knew it before – that if you cut an apple across the middle, you’ll find it has a star inside. (more…)

Making Connections moves on this week to another story involving a key and the role of pattern in it. It’s a story in the style of the traditional tale.

Keys – and a tale for telling to children

Traditional tales

Traditional tales are one of the three great categories of stories where storytellers look for stories to tell. For some, their favourite category is personal tales like my last week’s story of a forgotten key. Others believe that storytelling is essentially about creating new stories, maybe even making them up on the spot. That’s something we’ll move to in a couple of weeks.

For most of the working storytellers I know, however, traditional tales form the bedrock of the stories we tell. We may reformulate a story, update it, relocate it or otherwise change it in all kinds of ways. But we like to maintain that, whatever we do, traditional stories are fundamental. They’ve stood the test of time. They occur in all cultures. They contain keys to the problems of life. Myth or legend, fairy story or fable, ballad or morality tale, they are at the heart of storytelling.

For many people – new storytellers especially – this raises one immediate problem. (more…)