Stories to Tell to Children: Fifty-One Stories With Suggestions for Telling | ||
Introduction
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STORY-TELLER
CONCERNING the fundamental points of method in telling a story, I have little to add to the principles which I have already stated as necessary, in my opinion, in the book of which this is, in a way, the continuation. But in the two years which have passed since that book was written, I have had the happiness of working on stories and the telling of them, among teachers and students all over this country, and in that experience certain secondary points of method have come to seem more important, or at least more in need of emphasis, than they did before. As so often happens, I had assumed that "those things are taken for granted;'' whereas, to the beginner or the teacher not naturally a story-teller, the secondary or implied technique is often of greater difficulty than the mastery of underlying principles. The
Take your story seriously. No matter how riotously absurd it is, or how full of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a real story, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, do not tell it. Have faith in the story, and in the attitude of the children toward it and you. If you fail in this, the immediate result will be a touch of shame-facedness, affecting your manner unfavorably, and, probably, influencing your accuracy and imaginative vividness.
Perhaps I can make the point clearer by telling you about one of the girls in a class which was studying stories last winter; I feel sure if she or any of her fellow students recognizes the incident, she will not resent being made to serve the good cause, even in the unattractive guise of a warning example.
A few members of the class had prepared the story of "The Fisherman and his Wife.'' The first girl called on was evidently inclined to feel that it was rather a foolish story. She tried to tell it well,
When she came to the rhyme, — "O man of the sea, come, listen to me, For Alice, my wife, the plague of my life, Has sent me to beg a boon of thee,'' she said it rather rapidly. At the first repetition she said it still more rapidly; the next time she came to the jingle she said it so fast and so low that it was unintelligible; and 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 of interest and illusion was hopelessly broken for everybody.
Now, any one who chanced to hear Miss Shedlock tell that same story will remember that the absurd rhyme gave great opportunity for expression, in its very repetition; each time that the fisherman came to the water's edge his chagrin and unwillingness was greater, and his summons to the magic fish mirrored his feeling. The jingle is foolish; that is a part of the charm. But it
Let me urge, then, take your story seriously.
Next, "take your time.'' This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness, or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet realization of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time enough for every point and shade of meaning and no one will think the story too long. This mental attitude must underlie proper control of speed. Never hurry. A business-like leisure is the true attitude of the storyteller.
And the result is best attained by concentrating one's attention on the episodes of the story. Pass lightly, and compara-
The next suggestion is eminently plain and practical, if not an all too obvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular, if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, never admit it. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have been so 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 an appearance of its being in the intended order; but never take the children behind the scenes, and let them hear the creaking of your mental machinery. You must be infallible. You must be in the secret of the mystery, and admit your audience on somewhat unequal terms; they should have no creeping doubts as to your complete initiation into the secrets 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 need consideration, when dealing with so simple material as that of children's stories. There are times, too, before an adult audience, when a speaker can afford to let his hearers be amused with him over a chance mistake. But with children it is most unwise to break the spell of the entertainment in that way. Consider, in the matter of a detail of action or description, how absolutely unimportant the mere accuracy is, compared with the effect of smoothness and the enjoyment of the hearers. They will not remember the detail, for good or evil, half so long as they will remember the fact that you did not know it. So, for their sakes, as well as for the success of your story, cover your slips of memory, and let them be as if they were not.
And now I come to two points in method which have to do especially with humorous stories. The first is the power of initiating the appreciation of the joke. Every natural humorist does this by instinct and the
Children like to feel the joke coming, in this way; they love the anticipation of a laugh, and they will begin to dimple, often, at your first unconscious suggestion of humor. If it is lacking, they are sometimes afraid to follow their own instincts. Especially when you are facing an audience of grown people and children together, you will find that the latter are very hesitant about initiating their own expression of humor. It is more difficult to make them
Having so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it is important to give your hearers time for the full savor of the jest to permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It cannot be funny without it.
Every one who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed how careful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and laughter. Often the opportunity
A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to which these principles of method apply, is the story of "Epaminondas,'' on page 63. It will be plain to any reader that all the several funny crises are of the perfectly unmistakable sort children like, and that, moreover, these funny spots are not only easy to see; they are easy to foresee. The teller can hardly help sharing the joke in advance, and the tale is an excellent one with which to practice for power in the points mentioned.
Epaminondas is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and I mean to return to him, to point a moral. But just here I want space for a word or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in school stories.
There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equally necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about the proportion of one to three, in favor of the second kind; I make
The first kind is represented by such stories as the "Pig Brother,'' which has now grown so familiar to teachers that it will serve for illustration without repetition here. It is the type of story which specifically teaches a certain ethical or conduct lesson, in the form of fable or an allegory,—it passes on to the child the conclusions as to conduct and character, to which the race has, in general, attained through centuries of experience and moralizing. The story becomes a part of the outfit of received ideas on manners and morals which is an inescapable and necessary possession of the heir of civilization.
Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories are good ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems to maintain for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of the media through which we elders may transmit some very slight share of the benefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted experience.
The second kind has no preconceived
The story of "The Little Jackal and the Alligator'' (page 72) is a good illustration of this type. It is a character-story. In the naïve form of a folk tale, it doubtless embodies the observations of a seeing eye, in a country and time when the little jackal and the great alligator were even more vivid images of certain human characters than they now are. Again and again, surely, the author or authors of the tales must have seen the weak, small, clever being triumph over the bulky, well-accoutred, stupid adversary. Again and again they had laughed at the discomfiture of the latter, perhaps rejoicing in it the more because it removed fear from their own houses. And probably never had they concerned themselves particularly
The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the child somewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to-day's happenings comes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents; it exercises no intentioned influence on our moral judgment; it is there, as life is there, to be seen and judged. And only through such seeing and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power or originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand judgments essential to power.
In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundation of accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments, can look at new facts with fresh vision, and reach conclusions with simplicity, is the perennial power in the world. And this is the mind we are not noticeably successful in developing, in our system of schooling. Let us at least
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 which the jest depends wholly on an abnormal degree of stupidity on the part of the hero. Every race which produces stories seems to have found this theme 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 counterparts in the folly of the small Epaminondas.
Evidently, such stories have served a purpose in the education of the race. While the exaggeration of familiar attributes easily awakens mirth in a simple mind, it does more: it teaches practical lessons of wisdom and discretion. And possibly the lesson was the original cause of the story.
Not long ago, I happened upon an instance
It was sufficient. The child took the cue instantly. He looked hastily at his work, broke into an irrepressible giggle, rubbed the figures out, without a word, and began again. And the whole class entered into the joke with the gusto of fellow-fools, for once wise.
It is safe to assume that the child in question will make fewer needless mis-
I wish there were more of such funny little tales in the world's literature, all ready, as this one is, for telling to the youngest of our listeners. But masterpieces are few in any line, and stories for telling are no exception; it took generations, probably, to make this one. The demand for new sources of supply comes steadily from teachers and mothers, and is the more insistent because so often met by the disappointing recommendations of books which prove to be for reading only, rather than for telling. It would be a delight to print a list of fifty, twenty-five, even ten books which would be found full of stories to tell without much adapting. But I am grateful to have found even fewer than the ten, to which I am sure the teacher can turn with real profit. The following names are, of course, additional
- ALL ABOUT JOHNNIE JONES. By Carolyn Verhoeff. Milton Bradley Co., Springfield, Mass. Valuable for kindergartners as a supply of realistic stories with practical lessons in simplest form.
- OLD DECCAN DAYS. By Mary Frere. Joseph McDonough, Albany, New York. A splendid collection of Hindu folk tales, adaptable for all ages.
- THE SILVER CROWN. By Laura E. Richards. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Poetic fables with beautiful suggestions of ethical truths.
- THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. BY Eva March Tappan. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, New York, and Chicago. A classified collection, in ten volumes, of fairy, folk tales, fables, realistic, historical, and poetical stories.
- FOR THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. BY Carolyn Bailey and Clara Lewis. Milton Bradley Co., Springfield. A general collection of popular stories, well told.
- THE SONS OF CORMAC. By Aldis Dunbar. Longmans, Green & Co., London. Rather mature but very fine Irish stories.
For the benefit of suggestion to teachers in schools where story-telling is newly or not yet introduced in systematic form, I am glad to append the following list of
- Chicken Little
- The Dog and his Shadow
- Barnyard Talk
- The Hare and the Hound
- Little Red Hen
- Five Little Rabbits
- Little Gingerbread Boy
- The Three Bears
- The Lion and the Mouse
- The Red-headed Wood-pecker
- The Hungry Lion
- The Wind and the Sun
- Little Red Riding-Hood
- The Fox and the Crow
- Little Half-Chick
- The Duck and the Hen
- The Rabbit and the Turtle
- The Hare and the Tortoise
- The Shoemaker and the Fairies
- The Three Little Robins
- The Wolf and the Kid
- The Wolf and the Crane
- The Crow and the Pitcher
- The Cat and the Mouse
- The Fox and the Grapes
- Snow-White and Rose-Red
- The North Wind
- The Lark and her Little Ones
- The Mouse Pie
- The Wonderful Traveler
- The Wolf and the Goslings
- The Wolf and the Fox
- The Ugly Duckling
- The Star Dollars
- The Country Mouse and the City Mouse
- The Water-Lily
- The Three Goats
- The Three Little Pigs
- The Boy and the Nuts
- Diamonds and Toads
- The Honest Woodman
- The Thrifty Squirrel
- The Pied Piper
- How the Robin's Breast became Red
- King Midas
- The Town Musicians
- The Old Woman and her Pig
- Raggylug
- Peter Rabbit
- The Sleeping Apple
- The Boy who cried "Wolf''
- The Cat and the Parrot
- The Crane Express
- How the Mole became Blind
- Little Black Sambo
- The Lantern and the Fan
- How Fire was brought to the Indians
- Why the Bear has a Short
- Echo
- Why the Fox has a White Tip to his Tail
- Piccola
- The Story of the Morning-Glory Seed
- Why the Wren flies low
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Discontented Pine Tree
- The Talkative Tortoise
- Fleet Wing and Sweet Voice
- The Bag of Winds
- The Golden Fleece
- The Foolish Weather-Vane
- The Little Boy who wanted the Moon
- The Shut-up Posy
- Pandora's Box
- Benjy in Beastland
- The Little Match Girl
- Tomtit's Peep at the World
- Arachne
- The First Snowdrop
- The Porcelain Stove
- The Three Golden Apples
- Moufflou
- Androclus and the Lion
- Clytie
- The Old Man and his Donkey
- The Legend of the Trailing Arbutus
- The Leak in the Dike
- Latona and the Frogs
- King Tawny Mane
- Dick Whittington and his Cat
- The Little Lame Prince
- Appleseed John
- Dora, the Little Girl of the Lighthouse
- Narcissus
- Why the Sea is Salt
- Proserpine
- The Little Hero of Haarlem
- The Miraculous Pitcher
- The Bell of Justice
STORIES FOR REPRODUCTION
FIRST GRADE
SECOND GRADE
THIRD GRADE
FOURTH GRADE
STORY-TELLING IN TEACHING ENGLISH
I HAVE to speak now of a phase of elementary education which lies very close to my warmest interest, which, indeed, could easily become an active hobby if other interests did not beneficently tug at my skirts when I am minded to mount and ride too wildly. It is the hobby of many of you who are teachers, also, and I know you want to hear it discussed. I mean the growing effort to teach English and English literature to children in the natural way: by speaking and hearing,—orally.
We are coming to a realization of the fact that our ability, as a people, to use English is pitifully inadequate and perverted. Those Americans who are not blinded by a limited horizon of cultured acquaintance, and who have given themselves opportunity to hear the natural speech of the younger generation in varying sections of the United States, must admit that it is no exaggeration to say
The structure of the language and the choice of words are dark matters to most of our young Americans; this has long been acknowledged and struggled against. But even darker, and quite equally destructive to English expression, is their state of mind regarding pronunciation, enunciation, and voice. It is the essential connection of these elements with English speech that we have been so slow to realize. We have felt that they were externals, desirable but not necessary adjuncts,—pretty tags of an exceptional gift or culture. Many an intelligent school director to-day will say, "I don't care
The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex. They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves. The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,—these seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjust-
There is no "what'' without the "how'' in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle'' can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more unmistakable way in which the "how'' affects the "what.'' Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an uneducated ranchman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech. And, further, the immense personal equation shows itself in
The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the same when spoken. And it is the spoken sentence which is the original and the usual mode of communication.
The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a matter of "how,'' and to which we are awakening, must be corrected chiefly, at least at first, by the common schools. The home is the ideal place for it, but the average home of the United States is no longer a possible place for it. The child of foreign parents, the child of parents little educated and bred in
And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to be met at all. For the conception of English expression which I am talking of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning, save in constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious habit is formed. No rules, no analytical instruction in later development, can accomplish what is needed. Hearing and speaking; imitating, unwittingly and wittingly, a good model; it is to this method we must look for redemption from present conditions.
I believe we are on the eve of a real revolution in English teaching,—only it is a revolution which will not break the peace. The new way will leave an overwhelming preponderance of oral methods in use up to the fifth or sixth grade, and will introduce a larger proportion of oral work than has ever been contemplated in grammar and high school work. It will recognize the fact that English is primarily something spoken with the mouth and heard with the ear.
It is as an aid in oral teaching of English that story-telling in school finds its second value; ethics is the first ground of its usefulness, English the second,—and after these, the others. It is, too, for the oral uses that the secondary forms of story-telling are so available. By secondary I mean those devices which I have tried to indicate, as used by many American teachers, in the chapter on "Specific Schoolroom Uses,'' in my earlier book. They are re-telling, dramatization, and forms of seat-work. All of these are a great power in the hands of a wise teacher. If combined with much attention to voice and enunciation in the recital of poetry, and with much good reading aloud by the teacher, they will go far toward setting a standard and developing good habit.
But their provinces must not be confused or overestimated. I trust I may be pardoned for offering a caution or two to the enthusiastic advocate of these methods,—cautions the need of which
A teacher who uses the oral story as an English feature with little children must never lose sight of the fact that it is an aid in unconscious development; not a factor in studied, conscious improvement. This truth cannot be too strongly realized. Other exercises, in sufficiency, give the opportunity for regulated effort for definite results, but the story is one of the play-forces. Its use in English teaching is most valuable when the teacher has a keen appreciation of the natural order of growth in the art of expression: that art requires, as the old rhetorics used often to put it, "a natural facility, succeeded by an acquired difficulty.'' In other words, the power of expression depends, first, on something more fundamental than the art-element; the basis of it is something to say, accompanied by an urgent desire to say it, and yielded to with freedom; only after this stage is reached can the art-phase be of any use. The "why'' and "how,'' the analytical and constructive phases, have no natural place in this first vital epoch.
Precisely here, however, does the dramatizing of stories and the paper-cutting, etc., become useful. A fine and thoughtful principal of a great school asked me, recently, with real concern, about the growing use of such devices. He said, "Paper-cutting is good, but what has it to do with English?'' And then he added: "The children use abominable language when they play the stories; can that directly aid them to speak good English?'' His observation was close and correct, and his conservatism more valuable than the enthusiasm of some of his colleagues who have advocated sweeping use of the supplementary work. But his point of view ignored the basis of expression, which is to my mind so important. Paper-cutting is external to English, of course. Its only connection is in its power to correlate different forms of expression, and to react on speech-expression through sense-stimulus. But playing the story is a closer relative to English than this. It helps, amazingly, in giving the "something to say, the urgent desire to say it,'' and the freedom in trying. Never mind the crudities,—at least, at the time; work
All this will mean that no corrections are made, except in flagrant cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for introduction at a more favorable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if she were reading a report. She will remember, of course that she is not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with expression, just as a gymnasium teacher introduces muscular play,—for power through relaxation.
When the time comes that the actors lose their unconsciousness it is the end of the story-play. Drilled work, the beginning of the art, is then the necessity.
I have indicated that the children may be left undisturbed in their crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand, must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily be initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to dramatize stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the pupils through its present crude handling. Mother Goose is a hardy old lady, and will not suffer from the grasp of the seven-year-old; and the familiar fables and tales of the "Goldilocks'' variety have a firmness of surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable—or of a dignity suggestive of developed literature—are sorely hurt in their metamorphosis, and should be protected from it. They are for telling only.
Another point on which it is necessary to exercise reserve is in the degree to which any story can be acted. In the justifiable
A caution which directly concerns the art of story telling itself, must be added here. There is a definite distinction between the arts of narration and dramatization which must never be overlooked. Do not, yourself, half tell and half act the story; and do not let the children do it. It is done in very good schools, sometimes, because an enthusiasm for realistic and lively presentation momentarily obscures the faculty of discrimination. A much loved and respected teacher whom I recently listened to, and who will laugh if she recognizes her blunder here, offers a good "bad example'' in this particular. She said to an attentive audience of students that she had at last, with much difficulty, brought herself to the point where she could forget herself in her story: where she could, for instance, hop, like the fox, when she told the story of the "sour grapes.'' She
The trouble in such work is, plainly, a lack of discriminating analysis. Telling a story necessarily implies non-identification of the teller with the event; he relates what occurs or occurred, outside of his circle of conciousness. Acting a play necessarily implies identification of the actor with the event; he presents to you a picture of the thing, in himself. It is a difference wide and clear, and the least failure to recognize
In the preceding instances of secondary uses of story-telling I have come some distance from the great point, the fundamental point, of the power of imitation in breeding good habit. This power is less noticeably active in the dramatizing than in simple re-telling; in the listening and the re-telling, it is dominant for good. The child imitates what he hears you say and sees you do, and the way you say and do it, far more closely in the story-hour than in any lesson-period. He is in a more absorbent state, as it were, because there is no preoccupation of effort. Here is the great opportunity of the cultured teacher; here is the appalling opportunity of the careless or ignorant teacher. For the implications of the oral theory of teaching English are evident, concerning the immense importance of the teacher's habit. This is what it all comes to ultimately; the teacher of young children must be a person who can speak English as it should be spoken,—purely, clearly, pleasantly, and with force.
It is a hard ideal to live up to, but it is
Three elements of manner seem to me an essential adjunct to the personality of a teacher of little children: courtesy, repose vitality. Repose and vitality explain themselves; by courtesy I specifically do not mean the habit of mind which contents itself with drilling children in "Good-mornings'' and in hat-liftings. I mean the attitude of mind which recognizes in
As for voice: work in schoolrooms brings two opposing mistakes constantly before me: one is the repressed voice, and the other, the forced. The best way to avoid either extreme, is to keep in mind that the ideal is development of one's own natural voice, along its own natural lines. A "quiet, gentle voice'' is conscientiously aimed at by many young teachers, with so great zeal that the tone becomes painfully
Perhaps the common-sense way of setting a standard for one's own voice is to remember that the, purpose of a speaking voice is to communicate with others; their ears and minds are the receivers of our tones. For this purpose, evidently, a voice should be, first of all, easy to hear; next, pleasant to hear; next, susceptible of sufficient variation to express a wide range of
Is it too quixotic to urge teachers who tell stories to little children to bear these thoughts, and better ones of their own, in mind? Not, I think, if it be fully accepted that the story hour, as a play hour, is a time peculiarly open to influences affecting the imitative faculty; that this faculty is especially valuable in forming fine habits of speech; and that an increasingly high and general standard of English speech is one of our greatest needs and our most instant opportunities in the American schools of to-day.
And now we come to the stories!
Stories to Tell to Children: Fifty-One Stories With Suggestions for Telling | ||