Stories To Tell To Children(儿童故事)

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Stories To Tell Children

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 few suggestions which follow are of this practical, obvious

kind.

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, but there were parts of it

which produced in her the touch of shamefacedness to which I have

referred.

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

Stories To Tell Children

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 if the person who tells it FEELS foolish, there is no

charm at all! It is the same principle which applies to any address to any

assemblage: if the speaker has the air of finding what he has to say absurd

or unworthy of effort, the audience naturally tends to follow his lead, and

find it not worth listening to.

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 comparatively swiftly, over the

portions between actual episodes, but take all the time you need for the

elaboration of those. And above all, do not FEEL hurried.

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

Stories To Tell Children

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 value of

the power to story-teller can hardly be overestimated. To initiate

appreciation does not mean that one necessarily gives way to mirth,

though even that is sometimes natural and effective; one merely feels the

approach of the humorous climax, and subtly suggests to the hearers that it

will soon be "time to laugh." The suggestion usually comes in the form of

facial expression, and in the tone. And children are so much simpler, and

so much more accustomed to following another's lead than their elders,

that the expression can be much more outright and unguarded than would

be permissible with a mature audience.

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

Stories To Tell Children

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 forget their surroundings then, and more

desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will

see some small listener in an agony of endeavor to cloak the mirth which

he--poor mite-- fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to

laugh, and that everybody is going to.

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 is crudely given, or too liberally offered; and that

offends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is undoubtedly necessary

to any form of humorous expression.

A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to which

these principles of method apply, is the story of "Epaminondas." 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

Stories To Tell Children

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 ratio

uneven 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 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 a

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 moral to offer, makes no attempt

to affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture of

life, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer, "These things

are." The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes judgment on the

facts. His mind says, "These 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 illustration

of this type. It is a character-story. In the naive 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 with the basic

ethics of the struggle. It was simply one of the things they saw. It was life.

Stories To Tell Children

So they made a picture of it.

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 have its needs before our consciousness, in our attempts to

supplement the regular studies of school by such side-activities as story-

telling. Let us give the children a fair proportion of stories which stimulate

independent 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 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 of the teaching power of

these nonsense tales, so amusing and convincing that I cannot forbear to

share it. A primary teacher who heard me tell "Epaminondas" one evening,

told it to her pupils the next morning, with great effect. A young teacher

who was observing in the room at the time told me what befell. She said

Stories To Tell Children

the children laughed very heartily over the story, and evidently liked it

much. About an hour later, one of them was sent to the board to do a little

problem. 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 of

encouragement, she simply raised her hands, and ejaculated "`For the

law's sake!'"

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

mistakes for a long time because of the wholesome reminder of his

likeness with one who "ain't got the sense he was born with." And what

occurred so visibly in his case goes on quietly in the hidden recesses of the

mind in many cases. One "Epaminondas" is worth three lectures.

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 to the list contained in "How to Tell Stories to

Children."

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.

Stories To Tell Children

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 stories which have been found, on several

years' trial, to be especially tellable and likable, in certain grades of the

Providence schools, in Rhode Island. The list is not mine, although it

embodies some of my suggestions. I offer it merely as a practical result of

the effort to equalize and extend the story-hour throughout the schools. Its

makers would be the last to claim ideal merit for it, and they are constantly

improving and developing it. I am indebted for the privilege of using it to

the primary teachers of Providence, and to their supervisor, Miss Ella L.

Sweeney.

Stories To Tell Children

STORIES FOR REPRODUCTION

FIRST GRADE 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- The Hungry Lion pecker 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 The Three Little Robins Fairies 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

SECOND GRADE The North Wind The Lark and her Little The

Mouse Pie Ones The Wonderful Traveler The Wolf and the Goslings The

Wolf and the Fox The Ugly Duckling The Star Dollars The Country

Mouse and the The Water-Lil City Mouse 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

King Midas became Red The Town Musicians The Old Woman and her

Raggylug Pig Peter Rabbit The Sleeping Apple The Boy who cried "Wolf"

The Cat and the Parrot

THIRD GRADE The Crane Express How the Mole became Little

Black Sambo Blind The Lantern and the Fan How Fire was brought to

Why the Bear has a Short the Indians Tail Echo Why the Fox has a White

Piccola Tip to his Tail The Story of the Morning- Why the Wren flies low

Glory Seed Jack and the Beanstalk The Discontented Pine The Talkative

Tortoise Tree Fleet Wing and Sweet Voice The Bag of Winds The Golden

Fleece The Foolish Weather-Vane The Little Boy who wanted The Shut-

up Posy the Moon Pandora's Box Benjy in Beastland The Little Match

Girl Tomtit's Peep at the World

FOURTH GRADE Arachne The First Snowdrop The Porcelain Stove

The Three Golden Apples Moufflou Androclus and the Lion Clytie The

Old Man and his The Legend of the Trailing Donkey Arbutus The Leak in

the Dike Latona and the Frogs King Tawny Mane Dick Whittington and

his The Little Lame Prince Cat Appleseed John Dora, the Little Girl of the

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StoriesToTellChildren1StoriesToTellChildrenStoriesToTellChildren2Concerningthefundamentalpointsofmethodintellingastory,IhavelittletoaddtotheprincipleswhichIhavealreadystatedasnecessary,inmyopinion,inthebookofwhichthisis,inaway,thecontinuation.Butinthetwoyearswhichhavepassedsincethatbookwaswritten,Ih...

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