Workshop notes
Storytelling, Literature, Picture Books and Music
National AOSA Conference 2007 * San Jose
Peter and Mary Alice Amidon
Here are some online storytelling resources
http://www.storynet.org/
The National Storytelling Network: information on storytelling events,
conferences and resources throughout the U.S.
http://www.yellowmoon.com/
August House Press and Yellow Moon Press: two wonderful publishers devoted
to storytelling books, recordings and DVDs.
There are storytelling conferences and festivals throughout the United States. As
a Vermonter, my favorite is the League for the Advancement
of New England Storytelling (LANES) annual Sharing the Fire Conference in
the greater Boston area:
http://www.lanes.org/stf/sharing_the_fire.html
Here below are notes on our workshops:
Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night
on the Amidons’ Faerie’s
Gift CD
Owl and the Pussycat in the handout
on the Amidons’ Faerie’s
Gift CD
Introducing a song with a story is a great way to engage the children more deeply in the experience of the song. Watch out! They’ll ask you for the story every time.
Faerie’s Gift
PICTURE BOOKS
Our *Picture Book Bibliography* is in your
AOSA binder.
Mary Alice did:
Adding background music to books:
In the Fiddle There Is a Song by Durga Bernhard,
Chronicle Books, San Francisco,
ISPN 13: 9718-0-8118-4951-7
Music: CD called Brittany Haas: track: Dry and Dusty
We could not find a sales source for this on the web.
Try e-mailing Brittany:
ladrome@gmail.com
- Mother Earth
- Owl Moon
Books of songs:
- Johnny Appleseed
(Mary Alice’s music is in the handout).
I Miss You Every Day by Simms Taback
Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, NY, NY
ISBN 978-0-670-067912-1
(not a song, but associated with Woody Guthrie’s I’m Gonna
Mail Myself to You which is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s
Gift CD.)
Setting poems to music:
Time for Bed by Mem Fox; illustrated by Jane Dyer
Gulliver Books, Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
ISBN: 0-15-288183-2
Mary Alice’s melody:
*The Owl and the Pussycat
Peter’s music is on your handout.
The Amidons recorded this on their Faerie’s
Gift CD.
Friday Peter told:
Kanji Jo - the Nestlings
Mende, Liberia
from the telling by Margaret Read McDonald
This story is in her Tuck-Me-In Tales available as audio tape/CD
or book
http://store.augusthouse.com/searchproducts.cfm
Classic folk tales
TELL THEM!
Little Red Riding Hood, Three Bears, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Rapunzel,
The Mitten, Cinderella, Rumplestilskin,Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk,
Hansel and Gretel, Three Little Pigs, Gingerbread Man, etc.
Tell any other favorite folktales.
Tell stories from your own childhood.
Create your own storytelling introductions
to songs.
Saturday Peter told:
Sir Gawaine and Lady Ragnell
Learned from various sources.
Acting out stories
Children do this quite naturally; you just
set it up and, as much as possible, get out
of the way. After telling a folktale I give
them the homework to retell it aloud,
we might go through a speed through of
the story or do a quick group map of the
story or discuss the story (What was the
funniest/saddest/most scary/most memorable
moment?) Once they all know the story well,
you are the narrator, and maybe also the musician
(guitar, accordion). Pull the characters (and
human props) from the ‘audience’ of children
sitting in a bunch in front of the ‘stage’.
All the action takes place right in the middle
in front of the audience. The ‘actors’ speak
loudly so everyone can hear. If they forget
what happens next you can feed them a line
as the narrator: “And then Arthur asked Sir
Gromer what the riddle was.”
You can use this method to create a musical performance with added instrumental music, songs and dancing, or just do it once and leave it at that.
Chiney Doll song is on handout
There is a wonderful book of this song that is sadly out of print:
Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll : Adapted from an Ozark children's song
by Harve Zemach (Adapter), Margot Zemach (Illustrator)
but I found some copies at Amazon.com
I always introduce this song with a story, the idea of which I got from that picture book. I had always done the story with the book when I told it to 2-year-old Sam, and when we were recording Sam singing familiar songs and Mary Alice got to the Chiney Doll, Sam could not sing the song without telling the story: as far as we know, the first story he ever told.
As I mentioned at the workshop, a teacher who listened to that who knew a lot about child development said, “When Sam was grunting his way through the story it wasn’t that he didn’t remember the story; he knew it perfectly well. It was that he was turning the images in his head into language.”
And that is what we do when we tell stories, and we listen to stories we turn the language back into images.
Children need to hear stories, they need the classic folktales as a way to help sort out their emotional lives. The archetypal characters that inhabit folktales: the kings, queens, princes, princesses, ogres, giants, witches, wise old women and men, and everyman Jacks and Marys are, according to one of my storytelling mentors, Donald Davis, all part of our own inner selves. When a prince marries a princess at the end of a folktale, Donald Davis goes on, that marriage represents our male self marrying our female self; a healthy emotional integration.
There are depths of meaning of these wonderful folktales that we will never fully plumb, but whenever we tell folktales to children, it is wonderful to see them uncover endless and often surprising new meanings.
Tell away!
Best,
Peter and Mary Alice Amidon