Story Telling

I'm sorting out my front room and came across some notes I took on story telling. I do not consider myself a story teller. I read and I read aloud to my kids until they were in high school. I sang to them every night at bedtime and even made up songs for them. But I've never seen myself as a story teller.

"There is a story telling voice," I wrote in my notes. "There are gestures and facial expressions." And yet the best story teller I ever heard (and I haven't heard that many) did not use gestures, facial expressions, and she told it in her own voice. She stood very still, with her hands behind her back and spoke in a normal tone of voice. And I can almost hear her tell that story nearly 30 years later. Her connection to the story--letting the story take over the space--was so powerful that I remember her story and I have retold that story and it has changed my life in subtle ways.

It was a story about three brothers who set off to win the king's daughter. The older two muscled their way through the world, ignoring the small animals in their path, wreaking havoc wherever they went. The youngest brother took care not to harm the ants, bees, and ducks (if I remember this right) and even aided them. When the king set him three seemingly impossible tasks these small creatures came to his aid and he won the princess.

The story teller prefaced this tale with the story of one of her kindergarten students who requested that she retell this story. Normally the teacher would not retell a story so quickly, but the girl had a reason. A bee had been trapped in her window at home. Her mother set out to kill it, but the girl, inspired by the story she had heard at school, quoted the youngest brother, saying, "Don't harm it. It has done us no harm." She and her mother caught the bee and set it free outside. The teacher told us this anecdote to demonstrate the power of a good story. I too usually try to capture misplaced insects and bugs and set them free outside, inspired by the power of the girl's example.

Here are the notes I have from this wonderful teacher and story teller:

"Sit so I can see your eyes," she asks her class.

"All it [story telling] is is talking a story." She tells it in her own voice and the children listen.

The story is important and the telling is the most important thing--that it is being told.

"I only tell stories I like." Anything worth telling is worth retelling.

She suggested we read Amos and Boris to get started.
She said she reads a story 2 or 3 times.
Tells it to herself.
Reread.
Retell.
Practice at dinner time.

"Once you tell a story it's yours for life."

3 - 7 - 12 are the magic numbers

Story telling builds memory. The more you tell stories the freer children are to tell their stories.

True stories are marvelous.

Value of Mother Goose -- 11 good riddles [I'm not sure exactly what this last line means except I think it means Mother Goose is a good place to look for stories and telling riddles is a good way to get started.]

And now I can recycle this sheet of paper which has floated around my writing room for years and years and years. End of story.

Playing Catch Up

Books I’ve read this year but have not written up:

Mother Poems

Hope Anita Smith

Christy Ottaviano Books, Henry Holt and Company

New York, 2009

Torn paper illustrations

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs

Ron Koertge

Candlewick

2010

at least as good as the first one—I love these stories, told in poems, about a 14 year old baseball player/poet.

I Never told and Other Poems

Myra Cohn Livingston

Blackberry Ink

Eve Merriam

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

Candace Fleming

Ill. by G. Brian Karas

Atheneum Books for Young readers

2002

The Old Woman Who Named Things

Cynthia Rylant

Ill. by Kathryn Brown

Harcourt brace & Company

1996

wc on Waterford paper

Just finished reading:

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

By Helen Simonson

Random House trade paperback

Copyright 2010, 355 pp., 25 chapters + Epilogue

I loved reading this book, and it fit very well with our recent SCBWI Oak Park network discussion on Reading Like A Writer, Francine Prose. Simonson obviously loves sentences. She writes really fun and beautiful ones. She has a great sense of humor which is totally in the repartee and unspoken thoughts, not in slapstick or coincidence. I have been rereading some of the book and am a bit more critical the second time around. Certain phrases are perhaps over-used, such as “acid tone to the voice.” And the word “Humpbacked” occurs at least twice in the 355 pp. as an adjective not referring to whales. I did not notice the repetition when reading the book for the first time. It is only because I made note of (what I think is) the second mention—a beautiful sentence describing the gibbous moon rising—that I was struck on rereading by an earlier occurrence of the word. This does not significantly detract from the book, but I think it is something to be aware of, especially when writing a longer book—we authors fall in love with certain turns of phrase and can repeat ourselves unwittingly. I know my vocabulary and sentence structure, just in writing this, have been influenced by the book.

And something I’m curious about—the main characters are 68 and 51. Does this mean that twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings will not respond to the characters and the story the same way I did? I remember having trouble engaging with characters who seemed so much removed from me in age, when I was younger. But I may have been a shallower reader. And certain books have reeled me in even against my will and made me care deeply about characters with whom I felt I had little connection—Color Purple, Beloved, She’s Come Undone, and Shipping News all come to mind as books with characters I felt had little in common with myself and yet I came to love them. And the reason is they were so well-written that I could not stop reading.

Also just finished:

I Am The Messenger

by Markus Zusak

Alfred A. Knopf

copyright 2002

Zusak also wrote The Book Thief, which is one of my favorite books of the last 10 years. I Am The Messanger is not up to The Book Thief, and it was written earlier. I felt I could see Zusak learning to use language in innovative ways, developing his unusual and appealing characters--he was learning a lot in writing this book that came together in an amazing way in The Book Thief. His themes include the power of small acts and the goodness of ordinary people. I have read The Book Thief twice. I feel that I Am The Messenger, while I'm glad I read it, is not a keeper for my over-crowded bookshelves.

Reading Journal July 8, 2011

The Boss Baby

Written and Illus. by Marla Frazee

Beach Lane Books, copyright 2010

Book design by Ann Bobco

Text set in Heatwave

Illustrations are rendered in black Prismacolor pencil and gouache on Strathmore 2-ply cold press paper

40 pages, counting the end papers, with pages 1 & 40 pasted down

The art for this book is tremendous, with great humorous touches and a wonderful “Mad Men” look, and the text is also full of humor, using many business terms (boss, perks, meetings, executive gym, 24/7, out of the box.) Told in a very straight-forward, tongue-in-cheek way, this book makes a wonderful read-aloud, which parents will totally love. That makes me wonder who the real audience for this book is. It is not the baby itself, who would be way too young to understand the terminology or the humor. It might well be an older sibling who feels displaced by the baby—this book would provide a way of laughing at the situation, while describing pretty much what has happened. And it might make a child wonder if he or she was a boss baby when first born.

Roller Coaster

Written and Illus. by Marla Frazee

Voyager Books, Harcourt, Inc., copyright 2003

Illustrations done in graphite and watercolor on Strathmore 2-ply hot press paper

From the CIP—“Twelve people set aside their fears and ride a roller coaster, including one who had never done so before.” There is almost no story-line. The author describes people waiting in line, checking their height, deciding not to ride, getting aboard, and the ride itself. The beauty and genius of the book is in the illustrations, where the twelve riders are differentiated and fleshed out in the drawings. Facial expression and gesture convey way more than the simple text as the ride is taken. This is a book to study for subtle characterization, esp. through pictures.

Very defined time-line—waiting in line, riding the roller coaster, and getting off. However, each of the twelve riders has been through a unique experience on this shared ride. The relationships of the 6 pairs are worth examining in detail.