The art of storytelling is one of those that is drifting by the way side of high-speed life – elusive and far from the usual. Storytelling is more than just reading a story out loud to an audience. Story telling is infusing the story with the life of the characters, adopting their tones, their emotions and more. Story telling is about capturing the imagination of the audience and transporting them into the world you are telling them about whether you are reading the text, reciting from memory or spinning the yarn out as you go along.
Reading to Children
We talk about reading to children being so very important, but it’s not just the reading of the books that we need to do. We need to bring the stories to life. We need to tell them in such a way that our children not only want us to read to them again, they want to hear them again, they want to be transported again, they want to visit other worlds again. We need to do more than just read to our children, we want to tell stories to our kids and be the storyteller they listen to. We want them to be so enamored of the story telling that they seek out writers, authors and other books to enjoy those stories as well. Say what you want and I can say plenty, J.K. Rowling is a storyteller extraordinaire – and that’s why her books are so phenomenally successful because she can capture the imagination of young and old alike.
Today I Told Stories to the Kids
Today I ventured back into the halls of my daughter’s school to have lunch with her and to read to the kids again. I received a very warm welcome from the boys and girls of her kindergarten class. They were excited to see me sitting there with a stack of books in my lap. We started off the day with Clifford’s Show-And-Tell – a story that always appeals because they love to do show-and-tell themselves. Of course, they all knew that eventually Emily Elizabeth would take Clifford for show and tell, but it wasn’t about what she ended up taking, it was about how she got there.
The next book we read was Spookly, The Square Pumpkin – a thoroughly charming and utterly wonderful story about a square pumpkin who longed to be round, but because of his very shape, he was able to save the crop of pumpkins when a windstorm blew up and tore a hole in the fence. The gasp of horror from the kids as they realized that the pumpkins were tumbling out to be smashed against the water made me feel great as I realized they were really tied up into the story.
The last one we read was a more traditional Doctor Seuss – Mister Brown Can Moo, Can You? The constant sound effects and engaging chatter of sounds had the kids chanting along with me. When we were all done – they clapped their hands and sing-songed a thank you to me and I thanked them.
We need to do more storytelling in the world. When was the last time you sat down and told your kids a story?