For the past 9 years Montgomery County Public Libraries has sponsored the Storytellers’ Club for school-aged children at

Twinbrook Community Library. Due to budget cuts, the library will no longer be sponsoring this group. But the Dogwood Dogs 4H Community Club has agreed to take on a storytelling project. If you have (or are) a school-aged child, age 8-18, who enjoys storytelling, we invite you to join the Dogwood Dogs. We meet the first Sunday each month, Sept. –May, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. in my home in Gaithersburg, MD. Most meetings are planned to include an arts & crafts project, a snack, and an hour of storytelling. Our club also does a variety of community service activities. Three Sunday evenings are planned to be potluck suppers for the whole family, friends invited, with storytelling: Sept. 5, Jan. 2, and May 1. For more information about the Dogwood Dogs’ Storytellers’ Club, contact Eve Burton 240-543-0444 or ebnineteen@hotmail.com

Please be sure to put Storytellers’ Club in the subject heading to prevent the email from accidentally being deleted.

Eve Burton’s Notes From Nine Years of Storytellers’ Club: For nine years I’ve led the Storytellers’ Club at Twinbrook

Community Library. For almost that long I have also led the Twinbrook Tellers, a group of children who tell stories at area libraries and festivals. I thought that, as these programs come to a close at the public library, I’d like to share some of the things I’ve found to be important when doing storytelling with children.!

Storytelling with children is important. ! We live in a multicultural society. Oral storytelling with children allows us to share the rich variations of diverse cultural traditions while celebrating the common threads in our lives. Parents, teachers and caregivers all benefit from the ability to share stories with children. When children hear stories, they are introduced to history and values in a meaningful context. When they tell stories themselves, they internalize concepts they have only previously heard or read. This is the way to forge a new, shared cultural heritage among diverse peoples.!

Anyone can tell a story. ! Some folks have more polish, of course. There are surely better and worse ways to tell any given story, but there is no one right way to do it. One of the most exciting things about storytelling is how much it allows the storyteller to be him/herself: in the choosing of tales and the telling of them.  The more you do it, the better you get: at knowing yourself, knowing what stories you like, and knowing how best to share them with others. This is true for any storyteller, be s/he parent, teacher, caregiver or child.!

Keep storytelling with children a pleasurable, shared experience, never an opportunity for failure. Never make storytelling something that is required, evaluated, graded, or, consequently, feared. When I heard from an elementary school teacher one year that she was doing a unit on storytelling with her class, my first response was excitement.  When I heard that her students were required to tell a story and would be graded on it, I cringed. ! At Storytellers’ Club we always say anyone who wants to tell a story gets a chance; no one ever has to. Some children are comfortable telling a story on their first visit. Others may take months. Some never tell a story, and that’s okay. We need listeners as much as we need tellers.!

Every story a child tells is worth hearing. So we all listen. Carefully. And we applaud everyone’s efforts.

By Barbara Effron

The proper use of your speaking voice can be as important as finding your artistic voice.

The techniques that I learned years ago in voice lessons provide good reminders in the effective use of voice in storytelling performance.

One of the most common complaints I hear from storytellers is that their voices become strained, tired, or even hoarse during a storytelling program.  Here are some things that I do to help modulate and save my voice during a performance.

(1) Keep hydrated.  You lose a good deal of moisture doing all that talking.  Sip some water from time to time during class and avoid coffee before you teach (a tall order, I know, for those of use with early morning classes).

(2) Avoid “forward neck.” Forward neck is a type of poor posture, and it looks like this: Aside from being the cause of upper back problems, forward neck puts a lot of strain on your vocal chords, and your voice tires out very quickly when you stand with your neck angled down.

(3)  Keep your larynx low in your throat.  A normal human tendency is that when we try and speak louder, the larynx rises higher and tighter in the throat.  This also happens when we are nervous, excited, or energized.  Not only does this strain your vocal chords, but it leads to that “edgy” tone in the voice that we’d like to avoid.

Here’s how to keep your larynx low:  Touch your fingers to your vocal chords.  Now swallow, and notice the drop.  That is where your larynx should be when you speak to a group.  Keeping it there will take some practice, but it’s worth it.

Introducing the uniqueness of your brain by way of a diversion into current events

During her confirmation hearings to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor’s retreat from her “rhetorical flourish” that a wise old Latina might decide better than a wise old man may have been the right tactic to secure confirmation, but it was also a retreat from a truth about the human mind. Back in 1890, William James formulated a general law of perception: “Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our mind” We now know that James did not go far enough. Even what comes to us through our senses is not what is actually out there, but a highly filtered construct created by brain circuits unique to each individual.

Your eye is not a camera

I am going to start explaining how our brain does all of its processing by using the visual system as an example. Later on, I will tell you that each our other senses work the same way – and that the brain also mixes their information into the processing of vision as well. So here we go.

Nature’s eyes don’t record a picture all at once like a camera does. An eye, human or animal, wanders in fits and starts about a scene. When it stops for a moment, your retina cuts the welter of information falling upon it into pieces: edges, changes, motion, contrasts, colors, textures, light and dark, eye status, and a few other image primitives that we don’t yet understand. The optic nerves transmit these filtered fragments of the scene (10 times fewer bits of data than actually received by the rods and cones) to the back of the head where the brain starts to reassemble them. A moment later the brain tells the eye to move, blanks the optic nerve’s input during the move, and then pays attention again.

The back of your head takes all of this stuff pouring into it and abstracts the data into more complex kinds of filtered-fragments like: line segments and their lengths and orientations. These, and many other aspects of the scene move on forward in the brain to be abstracted and combined with other sensory information into: segment pairings, sequences, and orientations relative to up and down (crows looking at an upside-down human face turn their heads upside-down to recognize them just as you might turn a book right-side-up to read it). You get the idea now, I hope. Each level of sorting leads to more abstract concepts as the brain reassembles scene data into things like outlines; then to shapes (does that outline look like a snake or an elephant, or a snake that just ate an elephant or …). Then on to confirmed objects; then to concepts like “limb, leaf, dog, face, stone” and on to even broader constructs like “lithesome, laugh, dread, father, story.”

When the self-aware part of your mind finally gets to see an object, you don’t see it objectively. You see what the mass of pattern-matching circuits in your brain delivers to the conscious thinking ‘you.’ It is a picture, assembled from many snap-shots where the eye has dwelled for a time on this part or that part of the world; a picture that has been taken apart, resorted, reassembled, oriented and mixed with other, non-visual, information.

Robert Burns’ Lament; you see what your experience has programmed your brains to see.

That Ploughman Poet was right: we can never see ourselves as others see us. We can’t see anything as others do. The brain’s response to any scene is unique to each individual. Circuits, built up by experience in one person, might deliver the perception: “old woman.” Another circuit in another brain would see: “wise Latina.” All the filtering and sorting in a third brain might trigger the elusive “grandmother cell” which stops the processing with the message, “that’s nana.”

As these higher-level perceptions are delivered to our conscious minds, most of the information that went into triggering those disparate interpretations is thrown away. Minds don’t clutter themselves with how the line segments were pieced together into a human outline, they just remember the final, filtered output. This, by the way, should get us insensitive males off the hook for not noticing the color of that dress. It’s not that I couldn’t care, it’s that my life experiences never taught my mind’s filters to save or pass that information on to my “conscious mind.” (That’s a term neuroscientists try hard not to use. I am not a neuroscientist, I only talk to them, so I will occasionally fall from grace and use it.) Like words cut from early drafts of this essay, the data that got my brain to the concept “dress” is simply not left in my head to be noted or remembered, at least until my wife generates an important new life experience that creates in my brain a special circuit to insure that I do see and recall dress colors. (We will not dwell on what my life experiences have taught my brain to remember about some dresses.)

Significant, repeated experience builds physical application-specific integrated circuits in our heads. In animals, we can actually watch those circuits develop. These circuits and filters are unique to each of us, created to let us see better, with no conscious thought, what we have seen before. No matter how much we might strive to be impartial observers, we simply cannot see what others see. They had different experiences and thus have different brain circuits.

My wife looks at a roadside and instantly sees half-a-dozen invasive exotic plants. My brain registers only green. A former boss looks at equations, things he works with every day, and instantly sees meaning. I struggle with the import of each symbol. It’s not just that he is three times smarter than I (although he is) but his experience has shaped specialty processors in his head to interpret what life has asked of his mind. Dennis Proffitt of the University of Virginia showed that everyone vastly over-estimate slopes (it comes as a great surprise to those of us who have driven up Lombard Street to learn that no road grade in San Francisco is greater than 18°). When tired, we see a slope as five to ten degrees steeper than we would had we been rested. This altered view of reality also varies with the observer’s longer-term life experiences, e.g., growing up on the plains or in the Colorado mountains. Iowans actually see slopes as steeper. These differences among people run amazingly deep. Richard Nisbett showed that they extend down to the very first steps we take to interpret the world; there are measurable cultural differences even in how our eyes scan a scene and on what features they dwell and how long they dwell upon different kinds of features.

It’s Alive, or We see the world actively, not passively

We have, if you have not yet given up on reading this, seen that the brain works hard to assemble cleverly sliced-up fragments of sensory data into something meaningful to ourselves. As I hinted above for the eye, the process is not passive. When the part of the brain that is trying to figure out whether a line segment is vertical is uncertain, it tells the eyes to go back to that part of the scene and look again. It asks the inner ears for information about the orientation of the head when the eye was looking at that bit of the scene. It questions your muscle sensing (kinesthetic information) nerves to tell you how the head is tilted. Then, armed with this new data it sends on forward the information that these line segments are up-and-down, not sideways.

You can probably see immediately a similar pattern in trying to make sense of touch information coming from, say, our fingers. We feel something as smooth, changing to soft, and the brain asks the visual system to check on what it knows. It may tell your fingers to move over the surface again. Eventually, with the addition of a sharp sense of pain in your finger and your sense of groggy darkness, you decide that you have just encountered the cat under the covers.

Even the ear is not passive when it senses sound. Muscles in the ear change the shape of the ear canal in response to different kinds of sound. The brain-ear connection quickly damps down very loud sounds. The ear even creates sound itself to help compare incoming tones or beat against them.

So the brain actively interprets and toys with the data it receives from its senses. It sends out messages to help interpret the mass of data it receives and the self-aware you hardly ever plays in that game, or knows that the rest of your brain is doing this. Your unconscious brain is continually busy matching remembered patterns from your past to what you perceive in the present world and then telling your conscious mind what seems to be happening: is that line tilted as steeply as Lombard Street? Is that outline a dog? Is that shiny thing gold or iron pyrite? …

Confused? Don’t worry, if you hang on for another paragraph or two we will get to where “story” comes in.The Story Connection or Nicholas in “The Lumber Room”

The Story Connection or Nicholas in “The Lumber Room”

One of my favorite stories by Saki tells about an enterprising small boy, named Nicholas, who, through a clever ruse that started with putting a frog in his bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk, has managed to make his way into the storage or “lumber” room of his house, a place “carefully sealed from youthful eyes and about which no questions were ever answered.” The first thing he sees in that storehouse of unimagined treasures is a picture tapestry consigned by an aunt to dust and damp by way of preserving it.

“To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story. He sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming his direction through the wood?”

Nicholas looks at a picture and sees a story. He makes sense of the picture as a story because human brains are wired to do so. For here is the most recent discovery: not only does every sense have a set of similar circuits wired up in our brain that all work the same way, but the exact same circuitry is wired up to the part of the human brain that does memory (it’s called the hippocampus, but don’t worry about that). Our brains treat memory exactly like each of the five (plus) senses.

If you have followed me so far, I hope you are asking yourself right now: if memory is a sense, what are the things it senses, and what are the constructs that are built up from those elements, layer by layer? All the stuff I have belabored above about the brain is like what Nicholas thought to himself as, “simple if interesting,” but where are the wolves? I’d like to tell you that the neuroscientists know, but they don’t. This new finding is too recent for scientists to be able yet to lay out all the implications for us. Actually that makes it a lot more fun because at this stage we get to speculate. Here is my speculation.

The layers in sight, the progression from edges, to lines, to orientations, to outlines, to shapes, to objects, to grandmother progress in memory processing like this: character, to location, to incident, to dramatic beat, to scene, to plot, to STORY.

We storytellers have always thought that people make sense of the world through stories, now the very circuits in our brains point to this as (almost) provably being the case. In the same way each human mind takes sensory data apart and actively, recursively, puts it back together, layer by layer, in ways that make sense to each individual, based, in large part, upon what we have seen before; in that same way each of us keeps on processing that material through another set of layers to end up with stories. We think in stories and story fragments.

Back to Burns

Although the processing steps are the same, human brains are unique. People are unique. We are not all the same inside. True, some of the filters in our brains are common from person to person. Facial expressions, for example, are universal. A blind person shows the same face of disgust as a sighted person and people of every culture recognize the meaning in that face. We each have a powerful filter that can tell in an instant (almost without fail) the gender of a person as s/he starts to speak. But what we do about seeing disgust or recognizing the gender of a speaker can be very different depending upon what life has taught our unconscious brain circuits to do with the input. The stories to which we match the world are different for every person. If you don’t have a good story to match what you see happening, you won’t understand it well. We storytellers need to fill as many brains with lots of diverse stories if those brains are going ever to have a clear view of the world.

And finally, back to the Judge

It is right for Judge Sotomayor to strive for objectivity. Even to aspire to impartiality is a triumph of human cognition.  Still, as she herself pointed out in the hearings, we must seek to know what is true, not what we would wish to be true. What we do know should drive us to fill the Supreme Court with as wide a range of wisely-directed human filters as possible: Justices who will see the same truth in diverse ways. A wise Latina should make a healthy contribution to that mix. Her mind will be filled with stories different from those of the other Justices. We can hope that the stories through which she sees the world will fill one of those pans in the scale of Lady Justice with something different and give our court a new balance.

Dr. Ralph Chatham is a former physicist and submariner, now retreaded as technology analyst and professional storyteller. Former chairman of Defense Science Board task forces on training superiority and training surprise he also managed research on the brain and human perception at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Co-awardee, with storyteller wife Margaret, of the National Storytelling Network Oracle Award, he conducted workshops twice at the National Storytelling Conference as well as presented a Sea Story Showcase. In 2007 he was an invited Virginia teller at the Williamsburg Storytelling festival

When preparing a folktale for telling, it is extremely beneficial – and marvelously entertaining, moreover – to compare different versions in order to tailor the tale to your liking. St. Patrick’s Day provides the inspiration for a story to illustrate this notion: the humorous clash between two popular Irish heroes, Fin M’Coul and Cuchulain.

The most immediately observable difference, just in reading through the bibliography, is the various spellings for the three main characters’ names: Fin M’Coul (Yeats, Jacobs, de Paola), Finn McCool (Souhami), Finn MacCoul (Byrd), Finn Mac Cool (Riordan), Fionn mac Uail (Stephens) and just Finn (O’Brien); Cucullin (Yeats, Jacobs, de Paola, Riordan, Byrd), Cuhullin (Souhami) and the distinctively Scottish McConigle (O’Brien); Oonagh (Yeats, Jacobs, de Paola, Byrd, O’Brien), Oona (Souhami) and Una (Riordan).

The basic plot in each variant is similar: Cuchulain, the superior giant in size and strength, tracks down Finn M’Coul in order establish this fact once and for all, silencing Finn’s boasts. The anxious Finn makes for his home on Knockmany Hill, seeking his wife’s help in the matter. Oona formulates a plan, which calls for Finn to pretend to be his own infant son (the two have no children at the time). Oona soundly outwits Cuchulain, Finn relieves his opponent of his “finger of strength” by neatly biting it off, and once again the old axiom “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” is proven true.

In most of the tales, Finn also has a magical finger, a “thumb of prophecy.” It is in Byrd’s retelling alone that Finn’s acquisition of this virtuous digit is illuminated; the author gives credit to Stephens in his afterword for this element of his account. Although de Paola’s book makes no mention of Finn possessing a thumb of prophecy, it does claim that Cuchulain’s finger of strength was made of brass; in Byrd’s version, it is made of gold. The other variants seem content to have it be good old flesh and bone. In O’Brien’s tale, Cuchulain’s finger is also one of prophecy rather than strength, and Souhami’s story is the only one that shifts the finger referenced to the position of pinky rather than the middle finger. Perhaps because she is writing specifically for children, she did not want the negative connotations associated with that particular digit to garner disapproval from parents. One final interesting note along these lines: in many of the stories Cuchulain must pull or suck on his finger to gain the benefit of strength or prophecy (Yeats, Jacobs, Riordan, O’Brien); in Souhami’s story, no such machinations are required – he’s just strong.

The same goes for Oona in Souhami’s book. She needs no charms or faery magic because she outsmarts Cuchulain with her wits alone. She need not even consult the sister that appears in other variants (Yeats, O’Brien) or weave a charm for guidance and/or protection (Yeats, Jacobs, O’Brien, de Paola, Byrd). Byrd’s book fleshes out the idea of magic still further by supplying Oona with a sacred harp and a faery cat for a pet.

In every story, Oona offers Cuchulain loaves of bread with iron griddles secretly baked into them, but in some tales, he must perform certain tasks first. Oona requests that he pick up the house, usually to turn it around out of the wind (Yeats, Jacobs, Riordan, O’Brien, Byrd), although in Souhami’s case, it’s so she can dust under it! In most of the tales, Oona then asks Cuchulain to get water from a spring buried under rock (Yeats, Jacobs, Riordan, O’Brien, Souhami). An additional incident that appears in several of the variants is one in which Finn, posing as his own child, squeezes water from a stone (Yeats, Jacobs, O’Brien, de Paola); in actuality, the “stone” is a cheese, so naturally Cuchulain has no hope of duplicating the feat. Byrd has his own unique take on this episode; rather than squeeze water from a stone, Cuchulain is merely asked to crush one and curiously, is unable to do so.

Finally, the stories differ on the exact nature of Cuchulain’s defeat. In the oldest versions, Finn kills his enemy as soon as Cuchulain is rendered weak and powerless (Yeats, Jacobs). In later, slightly less violent variants, Finn merely beats him up (dePaola, O’Brien, Byrd) and Cuchulain wisely never troubles M’Coul again. In the most nonviolent retellings, the twist is that the removal of his finger – when Cuchulain foolishly decides to examine the so-called child’s teeth – causes the poor giant to shrink and flee, never to return.

However you choose to piece together your own retelling of a folktale, rest assured that thorough research is sure to result in a most satisfying story, and one best suited to your individual preferences. Happy investigating!

Yeats, W.B. [Editor], Fairy and Folktales of the Irish Peasantry, 1888; “A Legend of Knockmany” by William Carleton.

Jacobs, John [Collector], Celtic Fairy Tales, 1892; “A Legend of Knockmany,” source: William Carleton.

Stephens, James, Irish Fairy Tales, 1920; “The Boyhood of Fionn.”

de Paola, Tomie, Fin M’Coul: The Giant of Knockmany Hill, 1981.

O’Brien, Tales for the Telling: Irish Folk and Fairy Stories, 1986; “Two Giants.”

Riordan, James [Editor], The Kingfisher Treasury of Irish Stories, 1995; “Una and theGiant Cucullin,” retold  by the                      editor.

Byrd, Robert, Finn MacCoul and His Fearless Wife: A Giant of a Tale From Ireland,

1999.

Souhami, Jessica, Mrs. McCool and the Giant Cuhullin: An Irish Tale, 2002.

The internet offers easy ways for you to share your stories.  Here are two different opportunities to increase your exposure.

StoryBee is a volunteer-developed website featuring professional storytellers from across the country. Stories are divided into four age groups for listeners ages 4-18. Links for contributing storytellers’ websites are also included.  Join the growing list of contributing storytellers and share your stories.   http://www.storybee.org/index.html

Kids Public Radio is a network of web-based radio channels for kids.  One of the channels on the network, the “Jabberwocky” channel, contains stories and other programming for ages 2-8.  Visit http://www.kidspublicradio.org/ to see the full range of their offerings.  Their site also provides information about how to submit stories for use on Jabberwocky.

Lucia Gonzalez has assembled a number of popular tales with crowd appeal, including two of this reviewer’s personal favorites: “The Little Half-Chick” and “Martina, the Little Cockroach.” Even those faint-hearted souls with a particular aversion to cockroaches will not be able to help sharing in Martina’s sorrow when her sweet, gentle Ratoncito Perez suffers a terrible accident. In some versions of this story, the mouse dies—a terrible blow—or worse, Martina is gobbled up by a feline suitor as punishment for her vanity. Thank goodness Gonzalez has opted for an ending wherein the good-natured rodent husband not only recovers, but it is revealed that Martina has an unexpectedly beautiful voice, a quality that goes far toward redeeming the more repulsive aspects of this insect—even if couched in fantasy. And in a culture where children are often instilled with a sense of entitlement rather than schooled in sound moral character and the value of community service, Half-Chick’s hard-learned lesson truly hits home.

Four other stories grace this collection, and each one is followed up with a note about its origins as well as a glossary of the Spanish words used in the text—and perhaps most helpful of all, a pronunciation guide! All elements of the compilation are extremely well thought-out and executed, making it an immensely useful and entertaining source of Hispanic folklore.

Once upon a time there was an old woman. She looked at her calendar and saw that it was just about Halloween.

“Oh my goodness! Those children will be coming dressed as spooks and goblins. What’ll I do.” Then she saw a big pumpkin still in the garden. She brought it in and cut off the top. Then she scooped out the slimy insides and with her best knife carved a truly scary face on it with scary eyes, a hook nose and a truly wicked grin. Then she found a stub ( show thumb for size) of a candle and took it outside. She put the pumpkin on a wooden post and lit the candle.

The old woman looked at the pumpkin and the pumpkin looked at the old woman and it went WAAAH! (do this as loudly as you can).

“Wo-oo!” went the old woman and she ran off.

“Ho-Hum,” said the pumpkin. “That was fun.” And he went hop, hop, hop on his one wooden leg down the road till he came to a fisherman beside a river. (hop with upraised thumb)

The fisherman looked at the pumpkin and the pumpkin looked at the fisherman and the it went WAAAH!

“Wo-oo!” went the fisherman. He threw his rod one way and he dived into the water and swam to the other side.

“Ho-Hum,” said the pumpkin. “That was fun.” And he went hop, hop, hop on his one wooden leg down the road till he came to a bakery where the baker was just taking a big tray of cookies out of the oven.

The baker looked at the pumpkin and the pumpkin looked at the baker and the it went WAAAH!

“Wo-oo!” went the baker, up went the tray and cookies fell like rain.

“Ho-Hum,” said the pumpkin. “That was fun.” And he went hop, hop, hop on his one wooden leg down the road till he came to a farmer who was trundling a wheelbarrow full of turnips to feed his hungry pig.

The farmer looked at the pumpkin and the pumpkin looked at the farmer and the it went WAAAH!

“Wo-oo!” went the farmer, down went the wheelbarrow and the turnip rolled all over the field.

“Ho-Hum,” said the pumpkin. “That was fun.” And he went hop, hop, hop on his one wooden leg down the road till he came to the farm.

The farmer’s wife was on the porch saying “Where is that man! He only went to get turnips for the poor hungry pig.”

And the pig was in his pen with his little trotters on the top rail. “ Where is that man. I am so hungry!”

The pumpkin went hop, hop, hop on his one wooden leg up to the pig pen.

“WAAH!” said the pumpkin. Was the pig scared? No, what was the pig? The pig was hungry! So he ate the pumpkin, scary eyes, hook nose, wicked grin and all, and he even ate the stub of a candle.

“Ho-hum,” said the pig. “That was fun. And tasty too”

Selecting and Finding Stories to Tell.  Start by selecting short stories full of action and an easy-to-follow sequence. Avoid stories with subplots and more than three to four main characters. Cumulative stories such as “Henny Penny,” and circle stories like “The Stonecutter” work very well. Stories should be filled with repetitive words and phrases. For example, in “The Little Red Hen,” the story is driven by the repeated dialogue of the animals: “Not I,” said the dog. “Not I,” said the cat. “Not I,” said the mouse. “Oh my,” said the hen. “I’ll have to do it myself.”

Young listeners relate best to stories with animals, insects, or interesting and entertaining events. Tell stories that have content that relates to their lives. Look for humorous stories or ones that contain notable events that will be interesting and entertaining, such as “It could Always Be Worse.”

Tell stories that use vocabulary they can understand, but don’t be afraid to introduce new words. Names should be easy to remember and pronounce. Find stories that have the potential to invite participation. Use a chant or song in which the group joins you. The story message should be clear and relate to children two to five years old. Stories should not be too scary. The good should always triumph over the bad. Young children have not learned how to distinguish between fantasy and reality. They need to know in the end that they are not in danger. It is important that the mean old troll meets his fate at the end of the story.

A story with a clear ending is satisfying and makes sense to a young child. Most important, tell stories that you love so much that you will tell them with the same freshness and enthusiasm even after two hundred times. Folk and fairy tales, and some of Aesop’s fables, are a good source of stories containing these characteristics. Look in the picture book section and the 398.2 section in the library. Study different adaptations of the stories to help you create a version in your own voice. You can also find the text of many stories on the internet.

Designing the Program: I like to select a theme for my program because it gives me a focus as I choose stories, fingerplays, action rhymes, and songs. However, I am careful to have variety within the chosen theme. Consider one of my fall programs: “A is for Apple, Acorn, and Adventure!” ( ? indicates a song; FP – fingerplay ) Opening song with puppet Introduce Squirrel House Friends “Henny Penny” (Large stick puppets for children assistants) ? Acorn song ? Brown Squirrel “Little Red House” (Told by me with hand puppets) FP “Apple Surprise” ? Way up in the Apple Tree (or can do as a FP) Closing song with puppet Plan a 30 minute program. You can always shorten or expand the time. I have found that even toddlers (eighteen months to two years old) can pay attention if your program is fast-paced and full of variety.

Use a routine such as a simple and short greeting song, fingerplay, or a puppet greeting to begin and end each program. Preschoolers respond to rituals and this is a way to set the tone for the program. After my ending song, I give each child a stamp, just above their hand, using washable, non-toxic ink. The stamp relates either to the theme or something in one of the stories.

Program Content:  A thirty minute program consists of two or three stories with songs, fingerplays, and action rhymes. Use a variety of visual presentations to capture their interest – storyboards, puppets, or hats. Invite children to stand in front of the group with you using stick or hand puppets. Let the children wear masks or hats identified with the main characters. The children can say the characters’ line along with you or by themselves.

I use fingerplays to introduce or follow-up on a story. For example, I use a ghost fingerplay to introduce the jump story, “Dark Dark Tale.” The Ghost I saw a ghost. (fingers circle eyes) He saw me, too. (point to yourself) I waved at him. (wave your hand) But he said, “BOO!” (try to scare person next to you)

Music is the glue that holds my program together. Songs are incorporated in the stories or set the tone for a story. An action song, after a story gives the children a chance to move around and get their wiggles out. You could sing, “I’m An Acorn” after you tell an autumn story. Acorn Song I’m an acorn hard and round, Lying on the cold dark ground. Everybody steps on me. That is why I’m cracked you see. I’m a nut. (repeat this last line four times, as follows: Clap twice or click tongue and knock on head simultaneously while singing “I’m a nut.”)

There are even differences in the attention span between toddlers and children three to five years old. My version of “The Three Bears” for toddlers is a more condensed magnet board story. But I tell a longer version without any visuals to the older children. Sometimes the children of different ages are combined into one group. Then I target my selections to the middle, the three to four year olds.

Presentation: The key to a successful preschool storytime is your presentation and expectations. Sit on the floor or on a low chair so that they can see your face. Do not give long introductions to your stories. If you need to explain a new concept or word, be succinct. Ask lots of questions before, during, or after the story to keep them fully involved, but be careful not to ask something that is too general or vague. Answering simple questions will give them confidence and prepare them for listening. For a winter story you might ask what clothes they need to wear to play outside in the snow. During the telling of “Stone Soup”, you might want to ask them what they would add to the pot to help make the soup. Be prepared for answers that you might not have in mind, and accept all responses. If someone suggests adding cake to the soup, suggest that we eat the cake for dessert. Teach them any short chant or song before you tell the story to encourage their participation, but keep this as brief as possible. Think like a young child and let yourself go. Use your voice and body language to tell as much as possible. Be animated in your vocal expression using a variety of pitch and tempo, but don’t be too loud.

Tell the children in advance if something is going to be loud. Use clear gestures and movements that help convey your story. Don’t be afraid to be silly. Young children like nothing more than seeing grown ups acting silly or making mistakes. I get some of my best laughs when I drop an object by mistake. Build suspense by speaking softly or slowly. Ask questions such as: “And do you know what happened next? “Do you know what?” They love feeling like insiders. Little ones listen with their whole body. Welcome this outward response and know that they are connecting with the story. Comments that interrupt actually indicate active listening. Quickly acknowledge the comment, or find some way to incorporate it into the story, and move on. Every child has the potential to learn new vocabulary and concepts, and to be part of listening audience. Stretch their imaginations, concepts, and vocabulary as you expose them to stories .

The more you love and embrace your audience, the more responsive they will be to you. Young children are quite intuitive and they know when someone isn’t comfortable with them. Preschoolers e njoy the experience of your sharing stories with them. Do not be concerned if each child “gets” the story. Take satisfaction in knowing that you have exposed them to something new and magical. In short, have fun and go with the flow!

Sure Fire Stories:

• A Bee in her Bonnet
• Dark, Dark, Tale
• Going on a Bear Hunt
• Henny Penny
• I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
• It Could Always Be Worse
• Stone Soup
• The Big Enormous Turnip
• The Brave but Foolish Bee (Aesop’s fable)
• The Fat Cat
• The Frog Prince
• The Gingerbread Man
• The Gunny Wolf
• The Little Red Hen
• The Little Red House
• The Mitten
• The North Wind  and the Sun (Aesop’s fable)
• The Poor Tailor
• The Squeaky Bed
• The Stonecutter
• The Teeny Tiny Woman

Helpful Resources

• Briggs, Diane. 52 programs for Preschoolers : The Librarian’s Year-round Planner . Chicago : American Library Association, c1997
• Chadwick, Roxanne. Felt Board Story Times . Fort Akinson , Wisconsin : Alleyside Press, 1997
• Cromwell, Liz; Hibner, Dixie ; Faitel, John R . Finger Frolics : Fingerplays for Young Children
• Cobb, Jane, I’m a Little Teapot! Presenting Preschool Storytime
• Flint Public Library. Ring a Ring O’Roses: Fingerplays for Preschool Children Ring a Ring O’Roses: To order, go to : http://www.flint.lib.mi.us/ringoroses/index.shtml
• Harrision, Annette; Easy-to-Tell Stories for Young Children. Jonesborough , Tennessee : National Storytelling Press
• Irving, Jan and Currie, Robin. Full Speed Ahead! Stories and Activities for Children on Transportation. Englewood, Colorado, Inc.: Libraries Unlimited, 1988.
• Glad Rags: Stories and Activities Featuring Clothes for Children. Englewood, Colorado, Inc.: Libraries Unlimited, 1987.
• Mudluscious: Stories and Activities Featuring Food for Preschool Children. Colorado, Inc.: Libraries Unlimited, 1986.
• Raising the Roof: Children’s Stories and Activities on Houses . Englewood, Colorado, Inc.: Libraries Unlimited, 1991.
• Isbell, Rebecca and Raines, Shirley C. Tell It Again! 2: Easy-to Tell stories with Activities for Young Children. Beltsville , Maryland : Gryphon House, 2000.
• MacDonald, Margaret Read. The Storyteller’s Start-up Book : Finding, Learning, Performing and Using Folktales: Including Twelve Tellable Tales. Little Rock , AR : August House, 1996.
• The New York Public Library. A List of Stories to Tell and Read Aloud. order from, the Office of Branch Libraries, The New York Public Library, 455 Fifth Avenue , New York , N.Y. 10016 .
• Olson, Margaret J. Tell and Draw Stories (Tell and Draw Series) Creative Storytime Pr;
• Tell It Again!: Easy-to-Tell Stories with Activites for Young Children. Raines, Shirley C. and Canady, Robert J. Beltsville , Maryland : Gryphon House, 1999.
• Sierra, Judy. Multicultural Folktales for the Feltboard and Reader’s Theater . Phoenix , Arizona : Oryx Press, 1996.

Internet Sources

Kiddiddles: MoJo’s Musical Mouseum

www.kididdles.com

You’ll find lyrics of songs that you can search alphabetically or by subject. You can listen to selected songs as well.

Perpetutal Preschool

http://perpetualpreschool.com

This site is arranged by daily and holiday themes. Preschool teachers’ contributions make up the content of this continuously growing site.

Gayle’s Preschool Rainbow

www.preschoolrainbow.org/gayle.htm

Finger plays, action poems, nursery rhymes, and songs are grouped according to early childhood education themes.

This site collects over 30 years of Gayle’s experience as a preschool teacher.

Storytime Express
“Unique Journeys of the Imagination”
Contact: Barbara Effron - 703-323-1783
Storytimeexpress@hotmail.com
Visit my web page:  www.voicesintheglen.org/tellers/beffron