1、Stories To Tell Children1Stories To Tell ChildrenStories To Tell Children2Concerning the fundamental points of method in telling a story, I havelittle to add to the principles which I have already stated as necessary, inmy opinion, in the book of which this is, in a way, the continuation. But inthe
2、two years which have passed since that book was written, I have hadthe happiness of working on stories and the telling of them, amongteachers and students all over this country, and in that experience certainsecondary points of method have come to seem more important, or at leastmore in need of emph
3、asis, than they did before. As so often happens, I hadassumed that “those things are taken for granted;“ whereas, to the beginneror the teacher not naturally a story-teller, the secondary or impliedtechnique is often of greater difficulty than the mastery of underlyingprinciples. The few suggestions
4、 which follow are of this practical, obviouskind.Take your story seriously. No matter how riotously absurd it is, or howfull of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a realstory, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, donot tell it. Have faith in
5、 the story, and in the attitude of the children towardit and you. If you fail in this, the immediate result will be a touch ofshame- facedness, affecting your manner unfavorably, and, probably,influencing your accuracy and imaginative vividness.Perhaps I can make the point clearer by telling you abo
6、ut one of thegirls in a class which was studying stories last winter; I feel sure if she orany of her fellow students recognizes the incident, she will not resentbeing made to serve the good cause, even in the unattractive guise of awarning example.A few members of the class had prepared the story o
7、f “The Fishermanand his Wife.“ The first girl called on was evidently inclined to feel that itwas rather a foolish story. She tried to tell it well, but there were parts of itwhich produced in her the touch of shamefacedness to which I havereferred.When she came to the rhyme,-“O man of the sea, come
8、, listen to me, For Alice, my wife, the plagueof my life, Has sent me to beg a boon of thee,“she said it rather rapidly. At the first repetition she said it still moreStories To Tell Children3rapidly; the next time she came to the jingle she said it so fast and so lowthat it was unintelligible; and
9、the next recurrence was too much for her.With a blush and a hesitating smile she said, “And he said that same thing,you know!“ Of course everybody laughed, and of course the thread ofinterest and illusion was hopelessly broken for everybody.Now, any one who chanced to hear Miss Shedlock tell that sa
10、me storywill remember that the absurd rhyme gave great opportunity forexpression, in its very repetition; each time that the fisherman came to thewaters edge his chagrin and unwillingness was greater, and his summonsto the magic fish mirrored his feeling. The jingle IS foolish; that is a partof the
11、charm. But if the person who tells it FEELS foolish, there is nocharm at all! It is the same principle which applies to any address to anyassemblage: if the speaker has the air of finding what he has to say absurdor unworthy of effort, the audience naturally tends to follow his lead, andfind it not
12、worth listening to.Let me urge, then, take your story seriously.Next, “take your time.“ This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. Itdoes not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in aspeaker than too great deliberateness, or than hesitation of speech. But itmeans a quiet realization
13、 of the fact that the floor is yours, everybodywants to hear you, there is time enough for every point and shade ofmeaning and no one will think the story too long. This mental attitudemust underlie proper control of speed. Never hurry. A business-like leisureis the true attitude of the storyteller.
14、And the result is best attained by concentrating ones attention on theepisodes of the story. Pass lightly, and comparatively swiftly, over theportions between actual episodes, but take all the time you need for theelaboration of those. And above all, do not FEEL hurried.The next suggestion is eminen
15、tly plain and practical, if not an all tooobvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you atthe crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in someparticular, if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, NEVERADMIT IT. If it was an unimportant detail which y
16、ou misstated, pass righton, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have beenStories To Tell Children4so unfortunate as to omit a fact which was a necessary link in the chain,put it in, later, as skillfully as you can, and with as deceptive anappearance of its being in the intend
17、ed order; but never take the childrenbehind the scenes, and let them hear the creaking of your mentalmachinery. You must be infallible. You must be in the secret of themystery, and admit your audience on somewhat unequal terms; theyshould have no creeping doubts as to your complete initiation into t
18、hesecrets of the happenings you relate.Plainly, there can be lapses of memory so complete, so all-embracing,that frank failure is the only outcome, but these are so few as not to needconsideration, when dealing with so simple material as that of childrensstories. There are times, too, before an adul
19、t audience, when a speaker canafford to let his hearers be amused with him over a chance mistake. Butwith children it is most unwise to break the spell of the entertainment inthat way. Consider, in the matter of a detail of action or description, howabsolutely unimportant the mere accuracy is, compa
20、red with the effect ofsmoothness and the enjoyment of the hearers. They will not remember thedetail, for good or evil, half so long as they will remember the fact thatyou did not know it. So, for their sakes, as well as for the success of yourstory, cover your slips of memory, and let them be as if
21、they were not.And now I come to two points in method which have to do especiallywith humorous stories. The first is the power of initiating the appreciationof the joke. Every natural humorist does this by instinct and the value ofthe power to story-teller can hardly be overestimated. To initiateappr
22、eciation does not mean that one necessarily gives way to mirth,though even that is sometimes natural and effective; one merely feels theapproach of the humorous climax, and subtly suggests to the hearers that itwill soon be “time to laugh.“ The suggestion usually comes in the form offacial expressio
23、n, and in the tone. And children are so much simpler, andso much more accustomed to following anothers lead than their elders,that the expression can be much more outright and unguarded than wouldbe permissible with a mature audience.Children like to feel the joke coming, in this way; they love thea
24、nticipation of a laugh, and they will begin to dimple, often, at your firstStories To Tell Children5unconscious suggestion of humor. If it is lacking, they are sometimesafraid to follow their own instincts. Especially when you are facing anaudience of grown people and children together, you will fin
25、d that thelatter are very hesitant about initiating their own expression of humor. It ismore difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and moredesirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you willsee some small listener in an agony of endeavor to cloak the mirth whic
26、hhe-poor mite- fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is “the thing“ tolaugh, and that everybody is going to.Having so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it isimportant to give your hearers time for the full savor of the jest topermeate their consciousness. It is really robbing
27、 an audience of its rights,to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a newone if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be givena certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocalor repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But
28、 even more than other talesdoes the funny story demand this. It cannot be funny without it.Every one who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed howcareful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and laughter.Often the opportunity is crudely given, or too liberally offered; and
29、thatoffends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is undoubtedly necessaryto any form of humorous expression.A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to whichthese principles of method apply, is the story of “Epaminondas.“ It will beplain to any reader that all the several funny cr
30、ises are of the perfectlyunmistakable sort children like, and that, moreover, these funny spots arenot only easy to see; they are easy to foresee. The teller can hardly helpsharing the joke in advance, and the tale is an excellent one with which topractice for power in the points mentioned.Epaminond
31、as is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and Imean to return to him, to point a moral. But just here I want space for aword or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in schoolstories.There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equallyStories To Tell Childre
32、n6necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about theproportion of one to three, in favor of the second kind; I make the ratiouneven because the first kind is more dominating in its effect.The first kind is represented by such stories as the “Pig Brother,“which has now grown
33、so familiar to teachers that it will serve forillustration without repetition here. It is the type of story whichspecifically teaches a certain ethical or conduct lesson, in the form of afable or an allegory,-it passes on to the child the conclusions as toconduct and character, to which the race has
34、, in general, attained throughcenturies of experience and moralizing. The story becomes a part of theoutfit of received ideas on manners and morals which is an inescapableand necessary possession of the heir of civilization.Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories aregood
35、 ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems tomaintain for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of themedia through which we elders may transmit some very slight share of thebenefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted experience.The second kind h
36、as no preconceived moral to offer, makes no attemptto affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture oflife, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer, “These thingsare.“ The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes judgment on thefacts. His mind says, “T
37、hese things are good;“ or, “This was good, and that,bad;“ or, “This thing is desirable,“ or the contrary.The story of “The Little Jackal and the Alligator“ is a good illustrationof this type. It is a character-story. In the naive form of a folk tale, itdoubtless embodies the observations of a seeing
38、 eye, in a country and timewhen the little jackal and the great alligator were even more vivid imagesof certain human characters than they now are. Again and again, surely,the author or authors of the tales must have seen the weak, small, cleverbeing triumph over the bulky, well-accoutred, stupid ad
39、versary. Again andagain they had laughed at the discomfiture of the latter, perhaps rejoicingin it the more because it removed fear from their own houses. Andprobably never had they concerned themselves particularly with the basicethics of the struggle. It was simply one of the things they saw. It w
40、as life.Stories To Tell Children7So they made a picture of it.The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the childsomewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to- days happeningscomes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents; it exercises nointentioned influence on our
41、moral judgment; it is there, as life is there, tobe seen and judged. And only through such seeing and judging can theindividual perception attain to anything of power or originality. Just as acertain amount of received ideas is necessary to sane development, so is adefinite opportunity for first-han
42、d judgments essential to power.In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundationof accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments, canlook at new facts with fresh vision, and reach conclusions with simplicity,is the perennial power in the world. And this is the mi
43、nd we are notnoticeably successful in developing, in our system of schooling. Let us atleast have its needs before our consciousness, in our attempts tosupplement the regular studies of school by such side-activities as story-telling. Let us give the children a fair proportion of stories which stimu
44、lateindependent moral and practical decisions.And now for a brief return to our little black friend. “Epaminondas“belongs to a very large, very ancient type of funny story: the tale in whichthe jest depends wholly on an abnormal degree of stupidity on the part ofthe hero. Every race which produces s
45、tories seems to have found thistheme a natural outlet for its childlike laughter. The stupidity of Lazy Jack,of Big Claus, of the Good Man, of Clever Alice, all have their counterpartsin the folly of the small Epaminondas.Evidently, such stories have served a purpose in the education of therace. Whi
46、le the exaggeration of familiar attributes easily awakens mirth ina simple mind, it does more: it teaches practical lessons of wisdom anddiscretion. And possibly the lesson was the original cause of the story.Not long ago, I happened upon an instance of the teaching power ofthese nonsense tales, so
47、amusing and convincing that I cannot forbear toshare it. A primary teacher who heard me tell “Epaminondas“ one evening,told it to her pupils the next morning, with great effect. A young teacherwho was observing in the room at the time told me what befell. She saidStories To Tell Children8the childre
48、n laughed very heartily over the story, and evidently liked itmuch. About an hour later, one of them was sent to the board to do a littleproblem. It happened that the child made an excessively foolish mistake,and did not notice it. As he glanced at the teacher for the familiar smile ofencouragement,
49、 she simply raised her hands, and ejaculated “For thelaws sake!“It was sufficient. The child took the cue instantly. He looked hastily athis work, broke into an irrepressible giggle, rubbed the figures out,without a word, and began again. And the whole class entered into thejoke with the gusto of fellow-fools, for once wise.It is safe to assume that the child in question will make fewer needlessmistakes for a long time because of the wholesome reminder of hislikeness with one who “aint got the sense he was born with.“ And whatoccurred so visibly in his case goes on quietly in the
