The Art of Story-Telling
I
VALUE OF STORIES
Stories are the language of childhood. They are mirrors of nature in
which the child beholds his natural face “as in a glass.” They appeal
to every instinct of child nature. They feed every interest of the
soul. They strike a responsive chord in every awakening faculty of the
unfolding life. Boys and girls love stories as they love no other form
of address. Stories afford amusement and entertainment as play does,
for they are the mind’s play, as well as its natural soul-food.
Story-telling is as old as human speech. It was enjoyed by the
primitive children of all races and lands, as it is enjoyed by the
boys and girls of to-day. There is no better way to convey our ideas,
to widen knowledge, experience, and sympathy, or to impress moral
truth. Stories with plenty of life and action in them leave nothing to
explain. Conduct pictured in them needs no application or obtrusive
moral. Good stories, well adapted and well told, not only furnish
amusement and hold attention as no other form of speech does, but
possess positive value in many other directions. They feed, exercise,
and cultivate the imagination; appeal to the emotions; arouse the
will; strengthen the power of concentration; develop the sense of
beauty; stimulate the idealizing instinct; help to shape thought and
language; widen the child’s sympathies and fellowships; broaden his
world interests; prepare for future understanding of literary classics,
especially poetry; implant ideas of right and wrong; and, in short,
make the most lasting impressions of an ethical, esthetic, educational,
and cultural nature.
The story method is the golden method of instruction. No method of
teaching is so popular or powerful. The story-teller was the first
teacher of primitive children in Egypt, Assyria, India, China, and
Japan. The stories of the wandering bards, like Homer, in ancient
Greece, were the first education of the Greeks. Stories of national
heroes, such as we find in Plutarch’s Lives, delighted the Roman
boy just as the stories of Joseph and Samuel and David and Daniel
charmed and thrilled to patriotism the Jewish boy. During the Middle
Ages the monks, troubadours, skalds, jongleurs, wandering bards,
and minstrels never lacked an audience when they told or sang their
tales of mystery, heroism, or love. Story-telling has been a valuable
instrument for philosophers, poets, prophets, statesmen, and great
leaders of men in all ages. It was the method of Jesus, the greatest
of all teachers. “Without a parable spake he not unto them.” Plato
regarded stories for children as so important that he would have none
told that had not been approved by the public censor. Froebel, the
father of the kindergarten, said: “Story-telling refreshes the mind as
a bath refreshes the body; it gives exercise to the intellect and its
powers, and tests the judgment and the feelings.” Charles Lamb, Sir
Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Coleridge, Longfellow, Dickens, Emerson,
Lowell, Milton, Hawthorne, Stanley, Hugh Miller, Ruskin, and Wagner
tell of the influence of stories, and especially fairy stories, upon
them before the age of sixteen, and many before they were twelve. When
Henry Ward Beecher arose in Manchester, England, to make an address,
during the Civil War, pleading the cause of the Union before a bitterly
hostile assembly, he looked out upon a howling mob. He smiled, he waved
his hand, he waited in vain. At last he shouted, “Let me tell you a
story!” and at once the tumult ceased. He told them a short, pithy
story in half a dozen sentences, won their attention, and proceeded
with his great plea for human rights. It has been said that Beecher, by
this speech, stemmed the tide of popular feeling against the Union and
so prevented recognition of the Confederacy by the British Government.
All the world loves a good story. But give the story a place in the
heart and mind of childhood early enough, and you have laid the
foundation-stone for an enduring character. And beyond all this, as Dr.
G. Stanley Hall says, “To hear stories from the great story-books of
the world is one of the inalienable rights of childhood.”
STORIES IN THE HOME
Elementary teachers, junior librarians, and competent Sunday-school
teachers are now fully expected to meet the story-hunger of childhood
by good stories. But educated mothers also are coming to realize
that these workers for their children cannot be expected to do all
the story-telling. Parents, and especially mothers, should talk with
their children about the stories they have heard, and supplement these
with the cultural classics, such world stories as are found in this
collection, or with those from other sources.
“The mother’s heart is the child’s best schoolroom.” The home is the
first and holiest school. The home is the institution which is more
important and fundamental than all others. Teachers, ministers, and
other educators can cooperate with, but can never be substitutes for,
educated, cultured parents, who, by the great law of family life,
necessarily exert the most direct influence upon the life of the child,
and especially during its formative and most impressionable years. An
educator of wide reputation says: “If, at the end of the sixth year,
the child has not acquired self-control and a fair ability to be an
agreeable member of society, it is the fault of the home. A failure
to arrive at such a happy state of affairs may be due to economic or
social conditions back of the home, but normally this responsibility
for the care and training of children lies with the parents.”
Because so few mothers feel competent to cooperate in this creative art
of story-telling, such a course should manifestly become an integral
part of the education of every young woman of culture. This is, in
part, being provided, and soon must universally find a place in the
curricula of high schools, normal colleges, State universities, and
denominational institutions of learning. Many who are now mothers have
had no such training. All the greater reason, therefore, that the
mother who would be competent should avail herself of such books as
“Stories and Story-Telling,” by E. P. St. John; “How to Tell Stories
to Children,” by Sara Cone Bryant; “Stories and Story-Telling,” by
Angela M. Keyes; “The Children’s Reading,” by Frances J. Olcott;
“Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them,” by Richard T. Wyche; or
“The Moral Instruction of Children,” by Felix Adler. Any one of these
books, or the present volume alone, will assist any mother to improve
her opportunity of telling stories to her own children or to develop
her own natural gift into a conscious art, so that ability may fit
opportunity more perfectly.
It is well for the mother to have a definite plan for children’s
story-telling. Some mothers I know have set aside half an hour in the
morning after breakfast, when the husband has gone to the office and
her older children have gone to school, as the best time for what they
call “the morning stories of the Bible” (early chapters of Genesis)
for those who are in the early morn of life. Less fortunate mothers
have set aside Sunday afternoons. Others set aside a half-hour after
supper on two or three evenings each week, or even one evening, if that
is all that can be spared. Still others devote, faithfully, one-half
hour to their children’s story-telling before the children go to bed,
or even after they are in bed, and the children love that half-hour as
“the best of all the day.”
THE FATHER AS STORY-TELLER
The instinct of story-telling is, undoubtedly, more natural with the
mother, the children more necessarily turning to her with their cry for
soul-food, “Tell me a story!” But many a father would greatly enrich
his own life and his boy’s childhood memory by less absorption in the
evening paper, the monthly magazine, or the club in order to attend
to this soul-hunger of his boy’s mind. Longfellow, the great lover of
children, had the father as the story-teller in mind, when he pictured
“The Children’s Hour”:
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupation,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
* * * * *
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I hold you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
Not all fathers are so occupied with business cares that they may
not, if they would, attract their children and strengthen and ennoble
their life by stories. Not a few fathers I have known have left this
priceless heritage and memory to grateful children.
When should parents begin to tell stories to their children? As early
as possible. When should they cease? At no point. Walter T. Field,
in “Finger Posts for Children’s Reading,” tells of a father who read
a course in history with his sons when they were grown into young
manhood. Not the least reason for the father, as well as the mother,
being the story-teller to their own children, is the comradeship of
it. A well-loved writer once said that in his long experience he had
never seen any family of boys go wrong where their father was their
“chum,” if the father was himself the man he ought to be. The father’s
comradeship with his boy or girl begins very early in the child-life,
and the earlier it begins, the deeper and stronger will the roots go
down into the soul. Story-telling during the golden years of childhood
in the home, or as the father walks abroad into the country with his
boy, will weld bonds of friendship between father and son that no after
years can sunder.
Many homes cannot afford a large library of many books, but no home
is so poor that parents in joyous partnership may not gather the
children together on a winter’s evening or summer’s day, and tell them
some of the great stories of the world. To do so is to reenter in
joyous comradeship into the child’s enjoyment, which is the highest
prerogative of a parent. It is in this sense “to become again as a
little child.” And besides all, it is to be rewarded by discovering,
as nearly as can be on this side of heaven, the fount of perennial
youth.
STORIES IN THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL
Only recently has the value of teaching by stories been taken seriously
in the Sunday-school. It is likely Robert Raikes, the founder of the
modern Sunday-school movement, never thought of telling stories to “the
terrible bad boys,” the waifs from the alleys of Gloucester, whom in
1780 he gathered into his first Sunday-school in that city. Nor did the
four teachers whom he hired at one shilling each week seem to dream
of the children’s thirst for stories. They were perfectly content to
teach these “young savages” to repeat simple prayers, the Church of
England catechism, Bible questions and answers, and to sing Doctor
Watts’ hymns; and occasionally Robert Raikes gave them a crack on the
head with his walking-stick in order to impress some knotty point of
instruction. But the recent study of child-nature, and the influence
of modern psychology and pedagogy on the church, have clearly marked
out a better way. In the religious training of children, no less than
in their general education, story-telling is seen to be the easiest,
simplest, and most effective means of impressing upon a new generation
the lessons that have been learned by those who have gone before.
Dr. H. E. Tralle, in “Teacher-Training Essentials,” says: “All in
all, the story method is probably the most valuable of all methods of
teaching in the Sunday-school.”
“Of all the things that a teacher should know how to do,” says
President G. Stanley Hall, “the most important, without exception, is
to be able to tell a good story.”
Every Sunday-school teacher who would be successful in teaching
modern boys and girls must give attention to this golden method of
instruction, and should, as early as possible, learn this “the easiest
of all the creative arts,” the delightful art of story-telling.
But oral story-telling has value in the Sunday-school outside the
class instruction. The story form is the best expression of children’s
worship, and should be employed in what is called “the opening and
closing exercises.” A short story is soon told, but its influence
abides long after “the address” is forgotten. Let the story-tellers and
their stories be selected with care, and many a dull opening or closing
exercise will be enlivened and enriched. Bible stories, Christmas and
Thanksgiving stories, missionary stories, altruistic stories, stories
of hymns, stories of noble acts of children recorded in our daily
papers, all are serviceable. Many of the stories in this volume have
been told again and again in the opening and closing exercises of
Sunday-schools with good results.
Dr. Richard Morse Hodge well says: “If you do not tell stories at
the services of a Sunday-school, please reflect that some one else
may be telling stories to the same children at some other time and
place; may be doing more to promote their worship of God than what you
may be doing for them by a less intelligent method of conducting the
Sunday-school services.”
STORIES IN CHURCH SERVICES FOR CHILDREN[1]
“Stories are better than sermonettes. A five-minute story, well told,
from the pulpit often outweighs an hour’s discourse. Children under
twelve rarely learn through abstract terms. Such explanations bore
them, since they are first incomprehensible, and after a story are
superfluous. Stories are better than object-lessons, since stories
appeal both to the intellect and the emotions. Suppose a minister
holds in his hands a watch and observes that if it goes wrong it has
to be remedied from the inside, so also if a child goes wrong he has
to be altered in the heart. This is clear so far as it goes, but it
does not instruct a child how to adjust his heart any more than it
teaches him how to be a watch-repairer. But suppose the minister
tells a story of how ‘once upon a time’ a boy failed to be obedient
until he fell in love with his mother. He then deals with the problem
practically, directly, and naturally. The boy is full of interest, and
the minister is religiously educating and inspiring. Story illustration
is essentially the art of explaining the unknown by the familiar,
an untried experience by an experience already gained, as Jesus
used agricultural parables for peasants and fishing experiences to
unenlightened fishermen.”
A number of ministers I know are telling five-minute stories from their
pulpits each Sunday morning to the delight of both young and old; at
the same time enriching their service of worship and solving, as far
as it can be solved under present conditions, the vexed problem of
how to get children to remain to the preaching service of the church.
Others are successful in weaving into their shortened discourses choice
stories which hold attention and illume and enforce the truth presented.
STORIES IN THE KINDERGARTEN
Froebel is the father of the kindergarten and the great modern inspirer
of short story-telling for the young. His method was to create an
atmosphere in which the child-nature could best bud and blossom in its
unfolding life. For this reason he believed to have the children sit
in a circle is far more conducive to good results in story-telling
than the plan of the school with its bench and book. As disciples of
Froebel kindergarteners have been pioneers in story-telling, leaders
and inspirers of others and, until recently, as a class did more
story-telling than any other educators. The kindergarten age is from
three to six years normally, but with immature children may continue a
year or two longer. In this period the child is in a transition from
nursery rhymes and Mother Goose jingles to fairy tales, folk-lore, and
nature stories. If the mother is the teacher in the kindergarten of
her own home, as must be the case most generally, let her be sure to
give her children, in addition to Mother Goose jingles, the Fairy and
Folk Tales in Chapters I and III, such as “The Runaway Pancake,” “Red
Ridinghood,” and many of the Fables in Chapter II. In the kindergarten
proper let the teacher add to these world stories for this period such
others as these may suggest. And if she has a creative imagination let
her invent new stories from familiar objects, and let the children have
an opportunity to vote which stories they like best--the “made-up” ones
or these old classics.
STORIES IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
No longer are school-teachers content to have kindergarteners hold a
monopoly of story-telling. Richard T. Wyche, in his excellent work,
“Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them,” says: “In the grades the
child is occupied largely with reading and writing, the mastering
of form, the book, and the desk--things that for the moment deaden
rather than inspire, but are means to things of primary interest to
him. So much time is necessarily put on form and learning to read the
story that the pleasure and inspiration of the story itself is given
a secondary place.” While this is recognized, the oral story, well
told, is finding an ever-widening acceptance in the grades as the most
popular and successful method in education. Good story-telling is being
utilized in many subjects of the curriculum, for many purposes and in
many departments, within and without the classes, because its artistic
and educational possibilities are so great.
Richard T. Wyche gives his experience as a teacher in a little school
in the South. The teacher who preceded him “heard lessons”--and the
children “said lessons”--an easy way, he says, “for the questions
were in the book, and the children could memorize and say the answers
without interest or profit. They were bored by this mechanical process
as was the teacher.” One day he told the class the story of “Hiawatha’s
Fishing,” and every child listened with rapt attention, full of
interest. Many of the children wrote out the story for their lessons
the next day. One little fellow who did not write it told it in such a
vivid and realistic way that the class applauded. Two stories a week
followed until the whole story of Hiawatha was told. All the children
were interested, and within two months, grammar, language, composition,
spelling, drawing, had all been taught by the story-telling method.
The story is now seen to be so important a method in education that
we may expect to see this art become a part of the equipment of all
teachers, and the story literature of the world become more and more
accessible and adaptable to the unfolding life of childhood and youth
in our public schools.
STORIES AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
It is a poor public library to-day where there is no provision for a
story-teller and a “story-hour,” as a means of introducing boys and
girls to the best books. Books on the shelves are of no value. They are
for reading, but they are not likely to be read unless they are known.
A story, well told, from a book, will often prove the most successful
way of leading the children to desire to read the book. A friend of
mine, a teacher in the high school in a small town in Colorado, has
influenced the whole community for good by introducing a “children’s
story-hour” one afternoon a week into a library which, before her
effort, was scarcely patronized at all, and which now is the center of
interest and “the liveliest place in town.”
Of course the primary use of the story-hour in the library is different
from that in other places. In the public school the purpose of the
story is to teach language, literature, geography, history, and such
subjects; in the Sunday-school, church services, and the home, the
spiritual and ethical aim of the story is necessarily prominent. In the
public library, the story is told for the purpose of bringing the best
books to the attention of the public that they may thereby be benefited.
As each of these agencies in the educative process of the child
life differs in its task, so it follows that there must be in each
institution a different use of the story. But as elsewhere, so in
the library there are many “by-products” of oral story-telling. Miss
Frances J. Olcott, of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, Pa., the
prime mover and leader in this popular work, calls attention to the
by-products of the story-hour. She says: “Besides guiding his reading,
a carefully prepared, well-told story enriches a child’s imagination,
stocks his mind with poetic images and literary allusions, develops
his power of concentration, helps the unfolding of his ideas of
right and wrong, and develops his sympathetic feelings, all of which
‘by-products’ have a powerful influence on character. Thus the library
hour becomes, if properly utilized, an educational force as well as a
literary guide.”
STORIES IN SETTLEMENTS
Children in settlement districts in our large cities are not different
from other children in their love of stories. The story-teller is the
saint of the settlement. Few settlement workers to-day would venture on
their mission without the necessary equipment of this art.
STORIES IN BOYS’ CAMPS
Stories told to boys around the camp-fire at night leave little to be
desired in a boy’s imagination. They charm him as they did the weary
hunters in the boyhood of the race when the story-tellers beguiled the
silence of the desert or forest with the mirth and wonders of the same
tales that delight to-day. One of the finest collections of stories for
boy camps is “Around the Fire Stories of Beginnings,” by Hanford M.
Burr.
II
THE PERIODS OF INTEREST IN STORIES
It is a great mistake to suppose that any kind of story will do for
any age of childhood. Nothing could be more erroneous. There are
well-marked periods or epochs for different kinds of stories, as for
any graded instruction, and care should be taken to give each kind of
story “in its season” in the unfolding life. A study of the normal
characteristics and interests of child life underlies the selection
of suitable stories. A boy of twelve is a very different personality
from what he was at three and seven, and will be at seventeen and
twenty-one. Your boy or girl at twelve will reject, with scorn, a
fairy tale that lights up the wondering eyes of the young child. It
is necessary, therefore, for the parent or the child-lover to know
at just what age a particular type of story is adaptable, or when
the particular ethical truth intended to be impressed can best be
assimilated.
There is perhaps less harm done by giving boys and girls what is
beyond them than is done by talking down to them. They will be
bored by the too mature. They may permanently scorn the babyish or
sentimental. Moral nuts are not for babes; nor predigested food for
young athletes. Studies of children’s characteristics and interests
at different periods may be found in such excellent books as the
following: “Aspects of Child Life and Education,” G. Stanley Hall; “A
Study of Child-Nature,” Elizabeth Harrison; “The Pedagogical Bible
School,” S. B. Haslett; “The Individual in the Making,” Kirkpatrick;
“The Psychology of Thinking,” Irving E. Miller; “The Unfolding of
Personality,” H. T. Mark; “Childhood,” Mrs. Theodore Birney.
Such books are well worth consulting. They should lead to a first-hand
study of the different epochs of child life by every parent, teacher,
and minister who wishes to be “a workman who needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.”
Roughly sketched, the various periods of child life, with their story
interests, are as follows:
1. THE PERIOD OF BABYHOOD
This period is from birth to three years. The story interest begins
with lullabies, rhymes, and jingles. Every thoughtful mother must
notice that even before the little one can speak it responds to
rhymes repeated over and over. Half of the baby’s pleasure is in the
frequent hearing of a familiar strain. The baby enjoys also, largely
for rhythm’s sake, the shortest and simplest stories with refrains and
repetitions; also cumulative stories like the “Three Bears,” “This
Little Pig Went to Market,” “The House that Jack Built,” and many
others to be found in Mother Goose, Æsop, Grimms, and Jacobs. Mothers
should begin singing and repeating rhymes, rhythms, and nursery ditties
from the child’s very earliest days. The child’s delight in rhyme and
rhythm will be satisfied, the ear will be trained to listen, the power
of concentration will be cultivated, and, best of all, a preparation
for a love of poetry, a most valuable asset in education and in life,
will be begun. A keen interest and enjoyment in rhythm is found in
almost every normal infant. It is the rudiment or germ of a sense of
balance and harmony, and as such should be carefully nurtured. The
Greeks laid great stress on this sense of harmony through music and
poetry.
2. THE PERIOD OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
This period is from three to six years. It begins in an interest in
live things, in domestic animals, and later in flowers, wind, rain,
stars, and other expressions of nature. The child now finds delight
in picture-books, short stories of animals, birds, and flowers. When
a little older he enjoys fables, short fairy stories, and folk and
wonder-tales, short moral stories and imaginative stories of home,
play, and humor. Historic tales of the nation and Bible stories, well
adapted and simplified in language, will prove of the greatest interest
to children of this early period. No hard and fast lines can be drawn
in ages. Allowance must always be made for temperament, disposition,
heredity, and family environment. I have found little children, under
three years of age, reproducing to me, without having previously seen
me, or hearing them from me, several of the fairy stories and fables
in this volume; and I have found boys and girls nine and ten years old
still enjoying them. But with the average child such short fairy and
folk-tales are keenly enjoyed between the ages of three and six years.
3. THE PERIOD OF LATER CHILDHOOD
This period is from six to nine years. It differs from the preceding
period only in the fact that its normal interests are wider, its
vocabulary larger, and its whole outlook enlarged by reason of
attendance upon the public school. Fairies and Santa Claus are
naturally the favorite characters of children from three to six, but
as they pass out of early childhood they discern that “the cow did
not jump over the moon,” and that Santa Claus is, as one of my little
friends expressed it, “only the spirit of love.” The child then wants
true stories. He is apt to inquire earnestly, “Is it true?” or his
request may bluntly be, “Tell me a true story.” This is the period
for repeating in larger and more descriptive form the grand old Bible
stories that children of this age love so much. It is the time for the
realistic and historic tales of the nation that kindle imagination and
patriotism. It is the time for the lives of the pioneers, explorers, or
missionaries like Columbus, Capt. John Smith, Washington, Lincoln, and
Livingstone. This is the golden period of such stories from the Bible
(especially the Old Testament), from general history and from national
history, as are given in this volume.
4. THE PERIOD OF BOYHOOD AND GIRLHOOD
This stage, from nine to twelve, is possibly the most impressionable
period of life. It is not a time of marked internal changes, but one
in which the external, social, and regulative influences are very
prominent. Life is unique. The boy and girl are unlike the children
that were, or the youth and maiden that will be. The transition from
childhood to boyhood and girlhood comes very imperceptibly. But the
average child enters it when he begins to read easily and naturally;
and this ability may well mark the change. When a boy or girl has
this new power to understand and enjoy books, life acquires a new
range. The whole wide world of literature lies open. Life begins to
be full of meaning. These plastic years are the habit-forming period.
As the twig is bent the tree will be inclined. A pebble may turn the
stream of life. It is the great memory period. It is the golden age
to mold character after the Pattern in the Gospels, if the work is
done naturally. Give the boy and girl realistic stories--those from
the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts; those from the history
of all nations, and from our own national life. Give the choicest
idealistic stories--those legends, strong fables, romances, tales
of chivalry, and poetic interpretations of ethical truth, such as
“Favorites,” in Chapter IV of this volume; Ruskin’s “King of the
Golden River”; Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face”; and “The Story of
Midas,” which so strongly appeal to this age. In this pre-adolescent,
this habit-forming and golden-memory period, imagination, curiosity,
action, impressionableness, trust, loyalty, and many other instincts
of child-nature are all present ready to combine with every efficient
element of environment, education, example, and experience to build up
the foundation-stones of a wholesome character and useful life. Feed
the minds of these growing boys and girls on the great Bible stories,
the great classic, realistic, and idealistic stories of the world, such
as are found in this volume, or suggested by them, and your young men
and women will not care for trashy stories as they cross the bridge of
the teens.
5. THE PERIOD OF EARLY YOUTH
This period is from twelve or thirteen to seventeen or eighteen. This
adolescent period is the time of marked changes no less in mind than
in body. Like the former period, it is critical and determinative.
Self-consciousness, memory, honor, heroism, idealism, moodiness,
partisanship, are among the prominent characteristics. Fairy tales
do not interest. Stories of romance, heroism, and adventure make
the strongest appeal. Stories of egoism, triumph over difficulties,
self-mastery, loyalty to friends, are most keenly enjoyed. Stories
of altruism come later, in the next period. If they have not been
given in the previous period, the great romances of the world should
come early in this stage--Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”; Virgil’s
“Æneid”; the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table; the stories of
“Beowulf” and “Siegfried”; the legends of the red Indian “Hiawatha,”
and the great romances from the story-books of the world. The epics,
hero tales, romances, and great purpose-stories of the Old Testament,
as well as the scenes of the New Testament, find a ready response in
every normal youth’s heart, and should be given at this period. In
addition to these, stories from history, adventure, modern biography,
missionary life, well written or well told, will interest and impress
the character of all those older boys and girls who are so fortunate
as to have the mirror of life held up to them in this way as an aid
to them in the realization of those highest and best instincts and
impulses which are so naturally and abundantly surging within their
breasts during these critical early adolescent years.
6. THE PERIOD OF LATER YOUTH--YOUNG PEOPLE
This period is from seventeen to twenty-one or twenty-five. It is the
period of altruism, love, and vocation. The period of early adolescence
is egoistic; this period is ego-social, and strongly altruistic.
This change in the unfolding nature of youth opens the interest to
stories of self-sacrifice, heroic service and love even for enemies.
These stories could not be appreciated in so keen a way before. This
altruistic interest normally awakens several years earlier in girls
than in boys. (See Altruistic Stories, page 33.) At the beginning of
this period, and sometimes a little before, a natural interest in
romantic love leads to the keen enjoyment of such stories. Love is so
important and normal a factor in human life that such interest ought
never to be suppressed, but it should always be directed by the most
tactful and sympathetic guidance in the selection of such love stories
as are referred to on page 33 of this volume.
Another normal interest of this period is that of vocation, choosing
one’s life-calling. If the young man or young woman has not already
started to work to support himself, the question of his life-work
begins to press hard for an answer. And the ideals that shall shape the
choice or spirit of that life-work are already being formed. This is
the great time of appeal of such vocational stories as are indicated on
page 34.
III
TYPES OF STORIES TO TELL
Stories for telling may be found everywhere--in a thousand children’s
books, magazines, periodicals, poems, novels, histories. They may be
recalled from those heard in childhood. They may be “made up” from
the memory of one’s own past history or the adventures of friends. Or
they can readily be woven out of a vivid imagination. Such stories
may afford children passing amusement and a degree of profit, but
such stories rarely have the permanent, cultural value that comes
from an acquaintance with the old classics. Emerson said, “We love
the classics, not because they are ancient, but because they are
true to life.” Every child has a right to his literary and esthetic
inheritance, and these classics, these great world stories, should be
given him for their cultural, moral, and religious values before his
twelfth year.
An understanding of the normal interests of child-nature is the first
step in the selection of suitable stories to tell. The second step is
the actual selection. The selection, of course, will depend on these
factors--the story-teller’s purpose, his available material, and his
taste. The purpose of telling a story may be pure enjoyment, or the
impression of an ethical principle, or some cultural or educational
aim. The available material may be supplied by many books of short
stories retold. Such is the purpose of the present volume. The taste
of the story-teller must not be permitted to dominate the real life
interests and needs of the child’s nature. Nor will this be the case
if we realize the child’s story interests, and permit the child to vote
on the kinds of stories he likes. An understanding of the different
types of stories to tell will be of value to all who desire to secure
the best results. Some of the different types of stories may be
classified as follows:
1. BIBLE STORIES
Bible stories are the best of all to tell to children. They have a
cultural, esthetic, literary, educational, and ethical value, quite
apart from their spiritual and religious use, that puts them in the
very front rank as stories that interest, instruct, and inspire young
life. These stories are the rich inheritance of the race. They are a
treasure-house of ethical and spiritual wisdom. Bible stories are never
sectarian. It is the teller’s fault if he so interprets them. They are
pervaded by a perennial humanity and a direct simplicity that make
the strongest appeal to the young of every century. The Bible reaches
into the soul and impels the will to action as no other book does. For
these reasons every child should be made familiar with the Bible from
babyhood up. Simple parts should be read aloud to the child in its
early years. The simplicity, dignity, and grandeur of the language,
the objective spirit, and the dramatic action bring many parts of the
Bible within the comprehension of even a very young child. In telling
such adapted forms as are reproduced in this volume, care should be
taken, as early as possible, to familiarize the child with the Bible
version itself. Some of the best collections of Bible stories are:
“Children’s Treasury of Bible Stories,” Mrs. Herman Gaskoin; “Tell Me
a True Story,” Mary Stewart; “Stories About Jesus,” Dr. and Mrs. C. R.
Blackall; “Story of the Bible,” J. L. Hulburt; “Story of the Bible,”
C. Foster; “Kindergarten Bible Stories,” Cragin; “Old Stories of the
East,” James Baldwin.
2. MISSIONARY STORIES
Numerous short and simple stories of heroic lives have recently been
written in a very attractive way for boys and girls. These hero stories
are for telling, not reading, in home, Sunday-school classes and
opening exercises, junior mission circles, or young people’s missionary
meetings. A few of the best are: “Fifty Missionary Heroes Every Boy
and Girl Should Know,” by Julia H. Johnson; “Love Stories of Great
Missionaries,” by Belle M. Brain; “The White Man at Work,” and “The
Splendid Quest,” by Matthews (suitable for children eight to fifteen).
3. PLAY STORIES
Some parents and teachers find it hard to see any value in play stories
like “The Runaway Pancake,” “The Little Red Hen,” and “The Golden
Goose” (pages 47-51); or such nonsense stories as “The Fox Without
a Tail,” “Why the Bear Has a Stumpy Tail” (pages 71, 77); or funny
stories like “Lazy Jack” and “Epaminondas.” Such parents do not get the
child’s point of view. The idle pleasure or extravagance provokes their
displeasure and appears to them driveling nonsense. But why should not
the mind have an innocent frolic? Why should the child be deprived of
his birthright of “being a child” and “understanding as a child”? The
child loves play and loves these play stories because they are play.
4. FAIRY AND FOLK-TALES
Sometimes a mother says: “I do not want to tell my child lies. I will
give him only truth, history, biography, or useful stories.” Such a
mother fails to see that in excluding fairy and folk-tales from her
child’s mind she is simply shutting the door of his imagination and
hindering his power to do great things in after-life by closing for
him the storehouse of creative imagination. Imagination is the most
powerful factor in any life. Helen Keller, when asked what sense she
considered the most important, replied, “Imagination!” By imagination
the blind see the invisible. By this sense, Newton, Kepler, Davy,
Faraday, Edison, and Burbank saw from afar their great discoveries and
inventions and brought them near. Such an unpoetic mother would rob
her child of his right to his inheritance of an age-long literature; a
literature marking his kinship with the race-children of the past; a
literature adapted to his needs as to theirs, and a literature which
will serve as the basis of all true spiritual culture. “There are those
who reduce life to the plane of that of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind, who
cared not for feeling and sentiment, but must have cold, bare, hard
facts, enjoying only the practical and the usable, and living in his
rectangular house and having everything about him right-angled. But
we know that in children there is a place for the sentimental and the
free play of feeling, although these are not to be made prominent in
training and instruction but provided for in the material used. Doctor
Parker said: ‘The atheism, the materialism of the present day in our
land, is largely due to the banishment of fiction and fairy tales by
the Puritans. “Facts,” Gradgrind “facts,” drive beauty and holiness
from the child’s heart.’”[2]
Fancy, imagination, power to see the unseen, need to be fed with
suitable food. Imaginative stories exercise and cultivate the
imagination, the creative faculty. If a child lacks imagination, fairy
stories help to arouse it. If he knows little about nature, tales of
woods and fields will quicken and interest. Children who are brought
up in cities especially need the counteracting influences breathed
by these race-long tales which are so imaginative, objective, and
childlike, and which have been the joy of childhood from the morning
of the world. The best fairy tales also have great ethical value.
They present moral truths in a way that appeals directly to children.
“Cinderella” teaches the reward of modesty and humility; the “Golden
Goose” shows the reward of charity and a kind heart; “Red Ridinghood”
illustrates obedience to parents, the cardinal virtue of childhood;
“Boots and His Brothers,” readiness; “Toads and Diamonds,” good and
bad speech; and “The Frog King,” keeping a promise. Fairy tales that
present perverted ideas of right and wrong or that picture success
achieved by lying or theft, or that justify ingratitude, disloyalty,
or irreverence, should find no place in collections for children. Yet,
in the desire to impress a moral lesson, great care must be taken not
to strip these age-long stories of all their native freshness and
strength. The best moral effect will be gained by letting the child
enjoy the story as a whole without too pronounced emphasis on the
moral. Some good collections are: Grimm’s “Household Tales”; Andersen’s
“Wonder Stories”; Grimm Brothers and Joseph Jacobs, “Fairy Tales”;
Baldwin, “Fairy Stories and Fables.”
5. FABLES
Fables are short stories in which animals or inanimate objects are
represented as speaking or acting with human interests or passions.
They were among the earliest stories told by all races. Many of the
commonest fables, earliest told to children to-day, such as the “Dog
in the Manger” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” originated in Asia. Æsop’s
“Fables” was the first moral lesson book for children. They are now an
integral part of our literature and language. For this reason, as well
as others, children should become familiar with them. They please the
child’s fancy, satisfy his craving for short, objective, ethical tales,
and impress such virtues as prudence, honesty, contentment, generosity,
and wisdom. Fables that teach revenge or success by lying and craft
should be rejected.
Some good collections are: Æsop; La Fontaine; “Fables and Folk
Stories,” H. E. Scudder; “Fairy Stories and Fables,” Baldwin.
6. MYTHS
Myths have their origin in primitive man’s personification of the
forces and objects of nature, as gods, demons, giants, dwarfs,
light-elves, spirits of darkness, trolls, and hideous monsters.
Interpreting nature in poetic imagery and language, primitive races
came to believe in these myths as their religion. The Greek myths,
which are largely personifications of the beauty of nature, are
especially pleasing to children who love stories of flowers, trees,
fountains, and sudden transformations, as the natural response to
their inherent love of nature. The Norse myths are personifications of
the awe-inspiring natural phenomena of the cold and rugged northland.
Such stories picture stalwart courage, manliness, and heroic virtue,
qualities that appeal to later childhood and youth. The myths of the
American Indian, such as Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” treating of the
spirit of the wild woods and free out-of-door life, are well adapted to
the child’s love of nature.
“Myth is not a goal. It is a means by which the goal is reached.
The race grew out of the myth-making period of its development, and
the child will grow out of the myth-loving stage in its religious
development, unless hindered by parents or teachers who unwisely
withhold this childhood religious material from him.”[3]
Some of the best collections of myths are Hawthorne’s “Wonder-Tales”;
Kingsley’s “Greek Heroes”; “Norse Stories Retold,” Mabie; “Stories of
the Red Children,” Dorothy Brooks.
7. LEGENDS
Both myths and legends belong to folk-lore literature and to the
idealistic type of story. The difference between them is that the myth
is a personification of nature, while the legend is an idealization of
a person or place. “The myth is a creation of fancy from ideas. The
legend is the perception of an idea from a basis in fact. The myth is a
creation of pure and absolute imagination. The legend is a story based
on historical fact, but enlarged, abridged, or modified at pleasure.
Both myths and legends express the imagination, emotion, and spirit
of early man, and, for this reason, make a strong appeal to the same
qualities in the soul of those who are in the early years of life
to-day.” As all races have their legends, the list of them is long. Not
one-thousandth part of them can be told. Among legends that age after
age has loved and treasured, are those of India, brought together in
the “Jataka Tales,” those of Greece and Rome, of the Middle Ages, of
the Northmen, of King Arthur and the Round Table, and of the American
Indian. Some of the best collections are: “Juventus Mundi,” Gladstone;
“Famous Legends,” Crommelin (legends of all countries); “Legends of
Greece and Rome,” Kupper; “Book of Legends,” Scudder; “Child’s Book of
Saints,” Canton.
8. NATURE STORIES
Stories of animals, birds, pets, trees, plants, flowers, mountains,
seas, and other expressions of nature are very popular with children
from their earliest years. But these stories need adaptation and
strengthening with the growing years. They may be used to teach
the habits of animals or the laws of plant life, thus stimulating
scientific interest in the animal and plant world. Their best use is
simply to please and delight the child’s fancy. How children revel in
a story that begins, “Once there was a bear,” or “There was once a
little, furry rabbit.” Such stories are the first steps, in curiosity
and imagination, into the feelings and fortunes of creatures different
from themselves, preparing for a sympathetic interest in the lives of
others, not only of animals, but of human beings. In the early years,
fanciful animal stories may be given. But later, only true stories of
animals have value. Some good nature stories are: “Nature Myths and
Stories,” Cooke; “True Tales of Birds and Beasts,” Jordan; “Door-yard
Stories,” Pierson; “True Bird Stories,” Miller.
9. ALLEGORICAL STORIES
The allegory is a double story, or two stories in one. While one story
is being told, another, a deeper and often a still more interesting
story, is caught by the imagination or reason. Fables and parables are
short allegories with one definite moral. The allegory has been the
favorite form of story among almost all nations, and is especially
pleasing to children. The Bible contains a number of beautiful
allegories, one being the comparison of Israel to a vine, in the
Eighteenth Psalm. Æsop’s fable of the stomach and its members is an
allegory. Some of the most perfect allegories are found in “The Golden
Windows,” and “The Silver Crown,” by Laura E. Richards. Ruskin’s “King
of the Golden River”; Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”; Swift’s “Tale of a
Tub”; Addison’s “Vision of Mirza”; Mrs. Gatty’s “Parables from Nature”;
Miss Slossum’s “Story-Tell-Lib”; and, above all, Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s
Progress,” are allegories with which every modern boy and girl should
become familiar.
10. HISTORICAL STORIES
Idealistic stories--fairy tales, folk-lore, myths, legends, fables,
and allegories--have their place. They add to the poetry, imagery,
enjoyment, spirituality, and enrichment of a life that would often
be wholly prosaic without them. But after all, the growing boy and
girl who pleads “Tell me a true story,” at approximately the age of
six, reveals the truth that the mind cannot be satisfied without the
solid, hard, real ground of historical and scientific fact. For this
reason by far the larger number of stories that must be told, and that
are demanded by advancing childhood and youth, are realistic stories.
These are stories from national or world history, biography, personal
reminiscences and adventures, true stories of animals, and all others
that recount actual happenings. “These have a special value because,
besides suggesting a principle, they also indicate how it may receive
specific application in life. The deeds of the Christian martyrs and
of the modest heroes of every-day life have a certain power which is
beyond that of the most beautiful myth. The story of what Jesus did
means more than all the visions of all the prophets.”[4]
Stories of national history impress the mind of the young with
patriotism. Historical world stories inspire the heart of the young
with a broader human sympathy for all the nations of the earth. The
hunger for the heroic, which is native to the imagination and emotion
of every growing boy and girl, may be fed by these classic stories of
heroic action, endurance, decision, courage, faith, and self-sacrifice.
11. BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES
“God writes his greatest thoughts in noble men and heroic women.” The
Bible is a book of biographies. The Gospels are the four biographies
of its preeminent character, Jesus. This is one reason for the great
charm of the Bible stories and for the great value of the Bible as a
never-failing source from whence to gather material for the unfolding
mind of childhood and youth.
History too is largely the story of great lives in their setting. The
stories of individuals, and of events in which they are concerned,
furnish the best historical material for boys and girls from nine to
twelve. Indeed, biography should be central in the study of history at
least to the sixteenth year. Suitable stories of the lives of great
men and women are interesting at all stages of life, but particularly
during the years of later childhood and early adolescence, when
environment is widening and social and world interests are expanding.
Biography is full of religious nourishment, spiritual contagion,
ethical uplift, and humanitarian values. That which makes the strongest
appeal is found in the Old and New Testaments, the life of Christ,
the Acts of the Apostles, the great lives in national and general
history, lives of discoverers, pioneers, missionaries, adventurers,
inventors, warriors, seamen, and characters full of deeds of daring
and difficulty, but at the same time manly and moral. Biography has
too often, in the past, been limited to a record of the heroic deeds
of generals and statesmen in war and political upheavals. We now
see more clearly the value, in the earlier period of education, of
biographies of leaders in other fields besides war and statesmanship,
and we realize the necessity of inspiring youth with lofty ideals, by
examples of both men and women in all possible forms of human service
and moral and social heroism. This truer interpretation of the ethical
and spiritual value of biography and history is illustrated by the
biographical stories in Chapter X, “Heroes of Peace,” and Chapter XI,
“Modern Boys and Girls Who Became Useful.”
12. ALTRUISTIC STORIES
Stories of unselfish heroism appeal to every age, but they find their
strongest interest for the spirit of youth during the years of middle
adolescence. Such stories of self-sacrifice may be selected from the
Bible, history, fiction, or modern life. They not only show what is
noble action, but touch the soul with the contagion of self-sacrificing
deeds. From the Ethical Index, on page 291, under Altruism, Loyalty,
Self-sacrifice, and such synonyms, a list of altruistic stories may be
made.
13. LOVE STORIES
Stories of real or romantic love between the sexes have their strong
appeal in middle adolescence. There may be an interest in these before
this period or it may appear later. Such stories are usually for
reading, but some of the best for telling are: “Ruth, the Gleaner”;
“John Alden and Priscilla”; “Evangeline”; “The Silver Girl”; “Love
Stories of Great Missionaries,” by Belle M. Brain; “The Three Weavers,”
by Annie Fellows Johnson.
14. VOCATIONAL STORIES
These are the stories that will aid in preparing young people in
choosing their life-work, or that will inspire them with the highest
ideals in their work. Such stories may be found among all types. For
example, the fairy story, “Boots and His Brothers,” shows the value
of being prepared; the Bible story, “When Jesus Was Lost,” shows
when Jesus found his life-work; “The Legend of St. Christopher”
reveals ideals of service, and such legendary or historical stories
as “Horatius at the Bridge,” “King Bruce and the Spider,” and “Dick
Whittington” illustrate the rewards of service. Biographies are almost
all vocational. This vocational interest, either clearly revealed or
simply implied, may transform a story, otherwise distasteful to young
people, into one full of interest, inspiration, and profit.
15. INSTRUCTIONAL STORIES
These are stories that are invented simply for the purpose of imparting
instruction in some branch of science or art. The story-form and
story-interest is taken advantage of to produce interest in the
desired trade, craft, occupation, or science. Such stories must be
used with care. But if used moderately and with tact they may prove of
educational and even vocational value.
16. HUMOROUS STORIES
Variety is of great importance in story-telling, as in all ethical
instruction and educational training. Life demands variety. Moral life
is full of variety, vitality, and humor. Nor need we fear to bring
these qualities into story-telling. Humor is leaven. Without it ethical
teaching becomes flat. Laughter too is good for the world. It is a
tonic to the emotions. “It does us all good to laugh if there is no
smear or smirch in the laugh; fun sets the blood flowing more freely in
the veins, and loosens the strained cords of feeling and thought; the
delicious shock of surprise at every ‘funny spot’ is a kind of electric
treatment for the nerves.” (Sara Cone Bryant.) Laughter is tone to the
spirit and inspiration to fresh effort. It is a sign too, of broadening
imagination and sympathies. As the nonsense and play-story are good for
the child, so the wholesomely humorous story is good for the youth and
the adult.
IV
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR STORY-TELLING
The true story-teller, like the true poet, is born, and not made.
Talent in this creative art is a gift of nature, like a beautiful
voice or skill in painting. But study, cultivation, and practice are
necessary to advance the story-teller in his art, as in the case of the
singer or the painter. Some practical suggestions may prove of value to
beginners in story-telling:
1. ENCOURAGEMENT
There is comfort in knowing that a story need not be perfectly told
to interest and delight little children in the home, kindergarten,
or the lower grades of the Sunday-school and public school. The
imagination of the little child is so keen, so abundant, and flows
so freely that it triumphs over external defects of presentation and
reaches the heart of things. Though this is true of one child or of
a small group of children of about the same age and interests, it is
not true, as practice soon teaches, of a large group, especially of
children of different interests. Such an audience needs the magnetism
of personality to hold it, and some real art in the presentation of the
movement and details of the story.
Such professional story-telling is a rare gift, and is as valuable as
it is rare. Not every parent, teacher, minister, or educator of youth,
who may wish to be a story-teller may have the skill, time, patience,
or perseverance to become an artist. Such training would involve
the study of the technique of the use of the voice and of gesture, a
thorough knowledge of the sources for stories, skill in the selection
and preparation of material, practice in actual story-telling, and
the hearing of stories told by professionals, the character of whose
work unconsciously becomes the ideal of the story-teller. Training for
such professional story-telling is given in colleges, presented in a
number of interesting books, and encouraged by story-tellers’ training
classes and leagues in many places. The hints here offered have the
more modest story-teller in mind, the busy parent in the home, and the
Sunday-school or public-school teacher, who may not have access to the
technical books on the art of story-telling.
2. TELL THE STORY
Tell, do not read, the story. The teller is free. The reader is
fettered. The oral story is more spontaneous, the connection with the
audience is closer, the effect is more magnetic. It is the story plus
personality and appreciation. The story-teller can give his message
with his eyes as well as his lips without book or memory of the printed
page to burden. The world stories contained in this volume are all
designed for telling. After reading them through carefully once or
twice, the mind will have the facts ready for telling. Stories adapted
for telling must be written with more dramatic action and movement than
those adapted for reading. But stories that are in a form suitable for
telling are well adapted for enjoyable reading. Hence these stories
have a double value, for telling or reading. But let it be kept well
in mind that telling a story is incomparably better than reading it
to any listener. The charm of a book cannot equal the magnetism of
personality.
3. SELECT THE STORY
Select your story with some definite purpose in mind--pure enjoyment or
some definite ethical principle, and let the aim be clearly in mind in
the preparation for telling it. Select your story also with the child’s
story-interests in mind, as presented in Chapter II. Make sure also
that it is suitable in length and in style. Children who are accustomed
to hearing stories can listen a longer time than those whose ears and
brains are quite untrained. With very young children five minutes gives
room for a really stirring tale.
4. MAKE THE STORY YOUR OWN
This is not the task of the memory, but of the imagination and the
feelings. Read and reread the story. Do not memorize it. Visualize it.
Picture it mentally. Fall in love with it. See the images. Feel the
emotions of the characters. Breathe the atmosphere. Absorb its spirit,
scene, setting, plot, people, and parts. Make it your own creation,
living anew in your own soul. Then lay the book aside, and at leisure
reproduce it, part by part, in your own thought or words, making sure
that you have well in mind the story’s four parts: (1) Beginning; (2)
progress of events; (3) climax; (4) end.
5. MASTER THE FOUR PARTS OF YOUR STORY
(1) Your story must have a beginning, which should be brief, concrete,
interesting, introducing the chief character, scene, atmosphere, or
spirit of the story in the fewest possible words.
(2) Your story must have a progress of events, an orderly movement,
giving the essential facts, step by step, and full of action, leading
up to the climax without revealing it in advance.
(3) Your story must have a climax that cannot be missed. This is the
point and pith of your story. It is that for which it is mainly told
and enjoyed. If a moral lesson is to be imparted, it is here that it is
enforced. And failure here is total failure. Make sure of this climax,
for to miss it is like trying to tell a joke, missing the point, and
meeting humiliation and defeat.
(4) Your story must have an end. A successful ending is quite as
important as the climax, and needs careful consideration. It must
be brief and appropriate, and leave the mind at rest, without any
questioning or dissatisfaction. It may be well for the beginner at
first to analyze his stories in this way, into these four parts, either
in his thoughts or on paper, for it will give excellent practice and
make the retention of the story by the memory a simple matter. But
with practice and drill these four parts of a good story will take
their place in the mind and in the telling most naturally, easily, and
pleasantly.
6. INTRODUCING YOUR STORY
The consciousness of having a good story to tell, and a story adapted
to the age and interests of one’s audience, is the first step to
that ease, freedom, dignity, and repose which are necessary at the
start. If the story-teller can select his time, as many parents and
teachers can, so much the better. If he is met by an ill-prepared
audience, or an audience in an uncomfortable place, or under adverse
circumstances, his introduction must serve to put him in touch with his
audience. If several stories are in mind, the order may be changed,
and a “humorous” story or other introductory remarks may serve to pave
the way for the necessary response. Then he may proceed with the
intended story or stories with his own eye and heart kindled, moving
in a straightforward, spontaneous, self-forgetful way toward the
desired lesson in the climax, and ending happily, leaving the audience
delighted and impressed.
7. RETELL YOUR STORIES
Practise your stories! “Repetition is the mother of stories well
told.” Repeat them. Do not be afraid of retelling them. The younger
the children are the better they like old friends. Every one loves a
“twice-told tale.” (Hervey.) “Practise! It will go clumsily at first.
Imagination will be dull, facts will escape your memory, parts will be
confused. But persevere, persevere! Study results. Listen to others.
Catch their points of effectiveness. Above all things practise!
practise! practise!” (Wells.)
8. LET CHILDREN REPRODUCE YOUR STORIES
Children should be given an opportunity to tell and retell the stories
heard. Children like to create, and whether it be with sand, wood, or
words, the underlying processes are the same. For a child to retell a
story means that he enters into the spirit of it, that he sees clearly
the mental picture, that he feels the atmosphere and life of the story.
In this way imagination, memory, language, and reason are enriched and,
at the same time, the ethical principle of the story is more clearly
impressed on the child’s mind, to be assimilated at pleasure.
V
GAMES WITH STORIES
FINGER STORIES
Froebel was the first educator to discover the educational value of
simple, instructive mother-plays. His “Mother Play Book” is one of
the greatest books in the whole history of education. In it Froebel
pictures home as it ought to be, and accompanies the mother in her
daily round through the house, garden, field, worship, market, and
church. Here is one of his charming set of finger games for the mother
to teach her child while he is yet in her arms:
This is the mother, good and dear;
This is the father, with hearty cheer;
This is the brother, stout and tall;
This is the sister, who plays with her doll;
And this is the baby, the pet of all.
Behold the good family, great and small!
In such a song, the dawning consciousness of the child is turned to
the family relations, and is surely an improvement on the old nursery
method of playing “This little pig went to market.”
There are also little story finger-plays in which gestures may be
employed as in the finger-play rhymes. A collection of these finger
stories, the first play stories for infants, is given in “Descriptive
Stories for All the Year,” by M. Burnham; and in “Finger Plays,” by
Emilie Poulsson.
PLAYING THE STORIES
In early childhood, as soon as a story takes possession of the child,
he shows a tendency to enter into its persons and its action; to
mimic the voices, to ape the manners, to imitate the acts. This is
the instinct of imitation and play. The child should be allowed to
play out the story in this way, or better still, the parent or teacher
may propose playing the story. Not every story may be played equally
well, but the following familiar child’s stories may be used in play
and heartily enjoyed without staging or any stage terms--just natural,
spontaneous, hearty play: “Little Red Ridinghood,” “The Fox and the
Grapes,” “The Lion and the Mouse,” “The Hare and the Tortoise,” “Dick
Whittington and His Cat,” “Androcles and the Lion,” and others in this
book.
“The Fox and the Grapes” (page 67) may be played by a single child. A
wall is selected for holding the imaginary bunches of grapes. The child
stands or crouches, looking up longingly at them, then jumps up for
them, and, finally, after a fall, walks or crawls away, saying, “I know
those grapes are sour and not worth eating.”
“The Lion and the Mouse” (page 74) may be played by two children. One
child, choosing to be a lion, lies flat on the floor taking a nap. The
child acting as a mouse crawls over him, awakening the lion, who roars
and pins the mouse to the earth with his paw. “Let me go! I’ll help you
some time,” cries the mouse, and, being freed, runs away. Later the
lion is in an imaginary net, the meshes of which the mouse gnaws, and
then runs away, saying, “I did help you after all, you see.”
In a similar way many of the stories of this book may be reproduced in
play by two or more children to their great enjoyment and instruction.
DRAMATIZATION OF STORIES
As in the day-school kindergartens, little children play stories in
response to a natural impulse to act out whatever they are thinking
about, so in Sunday-school primary classes simple stories may sometimes
be played with great pleasure and profit. In a school in Chicago the
teacher had told the story of the “Lost Sheep.” Later the children
played the story. They made the fold of chairs. One child was the
shepherd, another child was the wandering sheep, and all the other
children were the sheep who followed the shepherd safely back to the
fold. When the shepherd realized that one sheep was missing, he started
out to hunt for it. He looked behind great rocks (chairs) and in all
dangerous places until he found the lost sheep. Certainly the child
who took the part of the little lost sheep will not forget. In such a
simple way the beginner in both the day-school and the Sunday-school,
or in the home, may act out a story whose lesson will never be effaced
from memory.
In later grades, historical and even Bible stories may be dramatized
in short plays with excellent results. On special days, instead of
presenting a ready-made cantata, let the children give a little play
of their own composition, the result of several weeks of work upon a
suitable Bible story.
Two good books of special interest on this whole subject are:
“Historical Plays of Colonial Days,” by L. E. Tucker and Estelle L.
Ryan; “Quaint Old Stories to Read and Act,” Marion F. Lansing.
VI
USE OF THE ETHICAL INDEX
Frequently a parent in the home, a teacher in the schoolroom, a
minister, or other child-helper, in dealing with children, wishes
to find a suitable story, at a moment’s notice, that may aptly and
forcibly illustrate some ethical principle that he may wish to
inculcate. Often a story, well selected and aptly told, will hold up
“the mirror to nature” and, indirectly, by the law of suggestion,
impress the mind and heart of the child far more successfully than a
precept, command, or obtrusive moral. The Ethical Index, which will be
found at the end of this book, on page 291, is for this purpose. By a
moment’s reflection upon the moral principle desired to be impressed
or suggested, a story illustrating it may be found. Of course, in many
stories more than one ethical principle may be found, but no more
than one, and that the strongest and most evident lesson, should be
emphasized in one story. In this ethical use of a story great care must
be taken not to overemphasize the moral lesson embedded in it, for that
will be to lose it. In the use of this index the story-teller may well
remember the prayer of Henry Van Dyke, “May I never tag a moral to a
tale or tell a story without a meaning.”