It’s great to come across a new collection of extremely tellable tales. Girls, Goddesses and Giants by Lari Don (A & C Black) has just this week come into my hands as one of a lovely pile of books I’ve been sent to review for School Librarian magazine. Chris Brown, the magazine’s long-term Books Editor, is just about to retire from that position. He’s done a marvellous job over all of the years. I shall miss him. He always seems to know what books I will value receiving.

Girls, Goddesses & Giants addresses a continuingly important need in stories, namely for strong girl heroines. When I was growing up, I always identified with the young men who were the usual fare in the hero department. Heroines were in shorter supply. Whenever a brave prince was rescuing a kidnapped princess doomed to be sacrificed to a voracious dragon, I became the sword-wielding prince as well as the princess.

Lari Don is not only an author. She’s a practising storyteller too. She has felt the same strong need. And as she says in notes at the back of her book (these include helpful hints on adapting stories to suit your own style), she has felt compelled to satisfy it even while actually being in the middle of telling to an audience of children. The 12 stories in her collection come from all over the world. One of my favourites is a Cameroonian tale, Mbango and the Whirlpool. It brought back to my mind Philip Pullman’s point, made in the interview I quoted a week or two back, that a main reason why children love folktales and fairytales is their belief in justice. They want to see fair play being done. (more…)

On Thursday this week I was asked a very pertinent question. It referred to the 40 or so people portrayed in William Kent’s mural that winds up the side of the King’s Grand Staircase in Kensington Palace. ‘But these are historical people,’ my questioner said. ‘How can we make up stories about them?’

Storytelling at Kensington Palace

At the time, we were standing at the top of the staircase as a class of schoolchildren rushed noisily down it and I was telling my group of adults something of what is known and not known about the characters in the mural. This was all part of the first of six sessions of a Storytelling course I’ve been employed to lead at the Palace – a course which is in turn part of the considerable Outreach work regularly carried out by the Palace with schoolchildren, parents and others.

The Storytelling course has two aims. One is to get the participants telling stories and learning and enjoying the techniques. On the other side is the challenge to create some new stories suitable for telling to quite young children. The stories to be made up will relate to the Palace and the idea is to take as a starting-point one or other of the characters in William Kent’s mural. All were real historical people in the court of King George I and they include such known persons as Mrs Tempest, Queen Caroline’s milliner, who is shown in the mural in a seductive black hood. Also there are Mustapha and Mohammed, the two Turkish servants who were closest to the king. It was their job to dress him and manage his bedchamber. As such, they were the cause of considerable envy and rumour among other courtiers. (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…)

Life moves on. School is back and this week I’ve been getting ready for a storytelling day this next Monday at Craig Yr Hesg Primary School in Pontypridd. As well as actually doing the preparing, I’ve been thinking about what the process of preparing means to me. All working storytellers have their own approach. But this is what it’s like for me.

Mind-mapping ~

At Craig Yr Hesg, it will be stories from Wales I’ll be telling. I’ve made my usual mind-map in the style of Edward de Bono  and along its branches I’ve noted some of the possible approaches and stories that are coming into my mind as possibilities. A lot of my sense of this arises from having had a chat on the phone the other day with the person responsible for organising Monday, in this case the headmistress. Emails are all very well. But it’s a personal chat about the arrangements – when and how to get there, the programme of sessions, content of sessions, the children, the approach – that gives me that crucial and immediate sense of the school which, personally, I couldn’t manage without.

Mind-mapping ~ possible stories

So the mind-map is where I’ve marked down my thoughts about what I’m going to do on the day. They’re suggestions to myself rather than fixed expectations since, on this kind of occasion, I’m well aware, I have absolutely no need or desire to decide in advance exactly what I’m going to do. I remember learning that lesson – that it’s perfectly possible to decide on the moment – one day early on in my storytelling career.  I was on a train to the school whose headmaster was at that time Chris Brown who for so many years has given his free time to being Reviews Editor of The School Librarian. As I agonised about about which of two stories I was going to tell to Chris’s own class, it suddenly dawned upon me that, if I knew both stories well enough to be able to tell either of them, I didn’t need to decide in advance. It was an exhilarating moment of liberation!

With Classes 3 and 4 at Craig Yr Hesg (that’s the Junior end of the school), my expectation is that I’ll focus on my Shemi stories. These stories were originally created and told by the remarkable Shemi Wâd, a North Pembrokeshire storyteller from the 19th century. I retold them in my book, Shemi’s Tall Tales. Apparently Classes 3 and 4 are boy-dominated and very lively. Experience tell me they will love Shemi. He’s Welsh. He’s eccentric. He’s brilliantly funny. Besides, Class 3’s theme as term begins is Flight, so I expect they’re going to love hearing how Shemi got flown across to Ireland by seagulls and shot back to Wales from a cannon. Besides the theme allows me to talk a bit about storytellers and to explore with the children the idea that we all have stories. Some of us get told them, some of us don’t, but we all have them inside us and in the world around us. (more…)

My Easter gift is an engaging Russian story-rhyme that I’m calling The Easter Egg. I hope you’ll like it and, between now and Easter, maybe share it with someone else. For me, it brings back some favourite memories.

For several years after it re-opened to the public, I was a kind of storyteller-in-residence at Somerset House on the Strand in London. At holiday-times, I’d do storytelling sessions on all kinds of themes. One theme was Somerset House itself: it abounds in historical tales. Another theme was gold and silver: Somerset House became the home of the Gilbert Collection of gold and silver treasures before this was moved to the V & A. Other themes were provided by the special big art exhibitions that were mounted at Somerset House. One I particularly remember was of Treasures from Russia. It gave me the reason and prompt for researching a repertoire of Russian tales that could relate to some of the marvellous objects that were on show.

Rare and beautiful egg-shaped boxes came up in several of these connections. So I was delighted when I succeeded in finding a Russian egg story to put in my rattle-bag of tales for telling at Somerset House.

Here it is. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly where I originally found it. No doubt in some old volume of Russian traditional tales. Which one exactly I don’t remember. (Note to self: ALWAYS keep a note of where you find a story. Years later, you’ll kick yourself if you don’t because by then you’ll have forgotten.)

The Easter Egg

This is a story about a little Russian girl who lived with her father and mother right next to her grandmother’s farm.

This little girl would often help her granny by feeding the animals or collecting the new-laid eggs.

One day just before Easter, her mother was making bread in the kitchen.

Her father, who was the local priest, was in church preparing his Easter service.

Then something terrible happened. (more…)

Little Bear In The Snow

Here’s the story (as specially improvised for a snowy week):

Little Bear loved going out. One morning he woke up and looked out of the window and saw that everywhere was covered in snow.

Little Bear was very excited. He told his Mummy, ‘I’m going out.’ So he put on his boots, his hat and his gloves and off he went. (His Mummy watched him, of course.)

First he scrunched down the path leaving great big footprints in the snow. And when he got to the gate, he saw the long road in front of him all covered with snow.

Little Bear loved going along the long road. So he went through the gate and started to run. First he scrunched his way to the hill. In the snow, it looked all white and shining. He couldn’t wait to get to the top. And when he did, do you know what he saw?

His own toboggan! Someone had left his toboggan on top of the hill. So Little Bear got on it and slid down the hill. WHEE-EE-EE!

At the bottom of the hill, he carried on stomping through the snow – SCRUNCH! SCRUNCH! SCRUNCH! – until he came to the river. He was excited to see that the river was all frozen over with ice. So do you know what he did? Little Bear slid across it – WHOOSH!

And when he came to the other side, he carried on SCRUNCH! SCRUNCH! – till he came to the end of the road. And when he looked down, do you know what he saw? (more…)

Storytelling Starters moves on this week to its second theme, Making Connections. The magic of objects will still be here, but now in the new context of finding and making links – links between different types of stories, links between storyteller and audience, links between real objects, inner feelings and imagination.

Keys – and a personal story

Keys are mundane, commonplace objects, and are also amazingly symbolic.

Say ‘key’ to me and my mind starts buzzing – with memories of my Aunty Mali’s house where keys were a major presence (all labelled and hanging in bunches), with my frequent anxiety as to whether I’ve got the house-keys on me when I go out of the house, with story-stories of the traditional type in which ‘keys’ are present in many guises from answers to a riddling question to what’s needed to resolve a quest. (more…)

The Sea-Tray

A large round tray-like object, it’s normally used, so I’ve been told, in the process of sifting rice and dhal. When I use it, however, it comes with a bag of pebbles which, when emptied onto the tray and rolled round, create the sound of the sea. Simple, hey?

My sea-tray as I call it is one of my most magic objects. When those tiny pebbles start swishing round on its surface, it immediately transports me to the rocky coast of North Pembrokeshire where I grew up. At once I hear the tide on Abermawr beach as the pebbles are flung forward by the press of the waves, then sucked back relentlessly as the waves recede. And the great thing is that whoever else is listening seems immediately to know the same sort of thing. They realise this as the sound of the sea – even if, like the Birmingham children I once worked with on a project with artist Catrin Webster – they’ve never even seen the sea. (more…)