A Storytelling Photo Journal

It was a wild ride, and it was fantastic fun. I told stories from pretty much one side of West Virginia to the other, mixing ghost tales, ballads, stories for children with a few side trips along the way.

It started in Ripley. This was the Do You Believe? Ghost Walks in my county's seat, and we started right at the courthouse steps. This year we had between 150 and 200 people come out for the walks over two weekends, even though it was right chilly the second Saturday. Civil War ghosts, town legends, old murders, historic homes, and the town's beginnings in frontier America all contributed to the evenings' tales.

Sunday I packed and prepared for the week's travels, and I was on the road early Monday morning, heading to Saint Albans, followed by Charleston and then Dunbar, telling West Virginia ghost stories at libraries in Kanawha county. No photos, unfortunately, as I was traveling solo so had no trusty sidekick to snap pics for me.

Tuesday morning found me in Clendenin, the home of the first library I managed. It is always fun to return and see how vibrant this library still is in this small community on the Elk River. I left there and headed north and east to Shepherdstown, WV in the far eastern panhandle of our state, to tell stories for the Speak! Shepherdstown series hosted by storyteller Adam Booth. The audience was fabulous for this event--seasoned adult listeners who really support storytelling in their community. After the evening show I drove west and south once again to Weston to be ready for the start of the West Virginia Storytelling Festival that started the next morning.

 This festival, held at Jackson's Mill, was excellent as always.

We told tales to about 1000 or more school children over two days, and participated in an evening storytelling concert for the public. Fun times!

This photo was taken in the WV Building--an unusual building built for a World's Fair and then brought back to WV. It's built of all the hardwoods found in our state.

The exterior of the WV Building, taken in the mist of early morning.

I left Jackson's Mill and headed south and west, taking the scenic route so I could once again visit two favorite places: Falls Mill and Bulltown.

Falls Mill is a small park on the site of a former mill, and Bulltown was the site of a Civil War skirmish.

West Virginia had no huge battles during the war but there were quite a few sizable skirmishes in the state. Bulltown was quiet when I stopped there, with no other visitors. There is an eerie feeling of going back in time in such a place when one is all alone. I almost felt the presence of the soldiers and family there.

Friday was booth day--we worked at Marietta to being new items to our spaces there. I'm afraid this booth was a little neglected lately while I've been on the road so much. It looked fine though, and we added a few new things. I'll post pics in a later post.

Then Saturday I drove to Cross Lanes for the last of my Kanawha county library performance series and then came back to Ripley for the Saturday night ghost walks. I was happy to see two people from the morning's program at Cross Lanes in attendance for the ghost walk--they drove a good ways to be there, bringing several friends with them.

I was kind of sad to see the end of this wild week of storytelling. I met so many people along the way, and West Virginia is wearing its beautiful fall coat so the drives were a treat in themselves.

Yesterday I unloaded my van, unpacked my suitcase, and then went over to Ravenswood to work on the booth there (pics coming in another post). And today? I think it's going to be a bit of a catch-up day, doing laundry, writing thank-you notes, paying bills, and all the mundane things that keep home running smoothly.

Using Puppets and Props to Tell Stories With Children

   

           A story leads the listener into an imaginary world, peopled by the imagination and the storyteller’s words. So why intrude into this world with puppets and other props? The question is valid and often asked by storytellers.

           

            To answer it properly, we must first define what a puppet is. Most people immediately see a puppet as something worn on the hand or suspended by strings and sticks and made to move by manipulation. In reality, a puppet is any inanimate object made to move through the efforts of an operator. With this definition, even a pencil or coffee cup is a puppet! Children begin at an early age to give life to inanimate objects when playing. Dolls dance or cry, plastic cars make sounds and race. When I was a child, my brothers and sisters and I would create days of play using stick horses, boxes and stuffed animals to create an “Old West” town in our imaginations.

            Learning occurs in many ways. Some people are auditory learners, some are sensory, some are kinesthetic/tactile, meaning they need to feel, touch and try things out for best learning outcomes. In an audience of three children, a storyteller may face three discrete learning styles. Puppets are visually attractive, they move and they act, thus reaching each child’s individual experiential learning style, and address many of Gardner’s multiple intelligences.[1] Other reasons for using a puppet include:

• They give color, texture and dimension to story characters and actions.
• A puppet can make the story come alive for children the same way pictures in books do, and provide visual clues to the story’s meaning while presenting the tale in a new way.
• Puppets can add dialogue to a story and provide opportunities for audience interaction, creating a multi-dimensional experience.
• Puppets can be a bridge for a storyteller to connect with hard-to-reach audiences.

            There are several ways to incorporate puppets in storytelling. Storyteller Batsy Bybell of Idaho uses her parrot puppet “Tooter Two” to introduce a storytelling session. The puppet’s outrageous behavior and antics relax an audience and creates community as the group laughs and anticipates the puppet’s next move. Bybell also uses puppets in the more traditional stage setting, moving seamlessly between puppet show and storytelling to provide a variety of activities that keep young audiences involved and actively listening.

           

            Children are often eager to use the puppets themselves to tell a story. A cast of puppets can be used to tell a traditional story such as The Little Red Hen. Children may choose to be any animal they like or be limited to barnyard animals, if that is the storyteller’s choice. In my version of this tale, children are encouraged to think creatively and to choose their favorite puppet. These animals then become the “barnyard” animals and the story becomes a creation of the teller and the audience as they interact with the selected puppets. This type of telling requires the storyteller to be comfortable with improvisation and to have good techniques for managing the interaction.

            Telling a story with puppets and audience participation provides opportunities for children to become active partners in the telling. A child with a puppet will say things they might not otherwise say. The child becomes a star in the story through the puppet and can experience success that bolsters self-esteem.

Some things to consider when selecting a story to tell with puppets:

o   All stories are not suitable for telling with a puppet. Strong story candidates will have:

1.      Few characters

2.      One main character, or no more than two

3.      Be fairly short

4.      Include repetition. Many Aesop fables are ideal for telling with puppets.

o  All puppets are not suitable for storytelling. Choose puppets:

1.      That have lovable, appealing characters

2.      With whom you can identify

3.      That you can give an appropriate voice

4.      That fit your hand snugly but comfortably enough to manipulate

5.      That do not constrict hand movements
6.      That you can develop a personality for
7.      That have eyes large enough to be seen by your audience (you can make bigger eyes using black and white peel-and-stick felt, if necessary)

Stories and Children

There is a common misconception that storytelling is reading books aloud to little children, or telling stories orally only to children. Storytellers must often explain exactly what it is we do--we tell stories live, in the moment, without reading them, to audiences of any age. We find our stories everywhere and anywhere: a chance comment in a grocery store, a mention in a book or newspaper article, another story, a memory, our life, our family, our community. We find the story, think about it, research it if necessary, consider various points of view for telling, and many other things before the story is ever spoken aloud.

Each teller has a personal style. Mine is a conversational, reminiscent of evenings in front of fire, at kitchen tables or on front porches, swapping and listening and sharing anecdotes as the night descends. I have found this method of presentation comes naturally to me as one of a large family of 13 children--the sharing of stories at our house was a daily occurrence, with everyone afforded the opportunity to chime in. I have also found my style adapts easily to whatever venue at which I perform.

I find my participatory style effective even in school settings. I usually suggest that rather than an all-school large assembly performance, I visit class groups of 60 or less with usually no more than two grades per group. My reasons for these smaller groups are several: first, I find I can make better eye contact with the individual child this way; storytelling relies heavily on that eye-to-eye communication to be most effective and in a theater setting this is not as easily and intimately accomplished. Second, it allows me to dispense with a sound system in most instances, again removing a barrier between the students and the story. While sound is sometimes needed because of acoustics of a particular setting, I think the natural voice is most, well, natural to storytelling. Third, a smaller setting allows me to field comments from the children between stories. Children want to share; they know things and have stories of their own to tell. While there usually is not an opportunity, unfortunately, for deeper conversations about what they have to say, being able to share even a little bit allows me to validate their story, and their storytelling ability. Fourth, we get to know each other. When I leave I feel like I know the children in the group and they feel a similar connection to me. It is important for children to feel acceptance and respect from their elders and small-group storytelling allows mutual respect to develop between teller and listener. And last but just as valuable, I can select stories suited to the developmental level of each grade. A kindergarten student operating at the concrete level of reasoning will not be likely to understand the humor or a tall tale or follow intricate story plots. Fifth grade students may get bored with the repetitive stories that are effective with younger children, for example.

Yesterday was a good case in point. At this particular school, I move from classroom to classroom instead of the children being brought to me. I started with the preschool group and ended the day with the fifth graders. The principal approved ghost stories for the two upper grades but these could not be told to younger groups because of parental requests--not even the very mild and playful tales. With preschool I told stories with puppets, songs with a flannelboard and we had lots of participation with the children playing parts in the stories and songs. Kindergarten and first got a couple puppet stories, a Jack tale and other Appalachian stories along with a song or two. For third grade I continued with Appalachian stories and two traditional folk tales, one told as a rap and the other a Spoonerism (Rindercella) to demonstrate that there are many ways to tell a tale. Since fourth grade studies West Virginia history in our state, I focused on West Virginia historical tales an traditional Appalachian stories, including a few ballads, a coal mining story, the story of my parents' meeting during World War II and a ghost story or two. For the fifth grade I repeated some of the stories told in the fourth grade but added some West Virginia ghost stories and ballads for more mature listeners. I brought puppets for the younger groups and coal mining artifacts and historical documents for the older groups. Woven through each performance was an ongoing conversation that created the transitions between stories and sometimes determined the next story I would tell.

In the course of the day I heard stories from the children. I heard about a haunted tunnel after I told the story of one such tunnel; I heard about a local site with a Native American historical background and a legend to go with it; I heard about bear hunting and about immigrant grandparents, about a creature said to leave green slime in its path, about coal mining and superstitions. I left with the feeling that these children are from families that still tell stories, that share memories and folklore. I do not think this was a unique school; I think that given the opportunity all children have stories they want to share, if only they had a time and place to do so. The time I had with them afforded an opportunity for at least a few of them to tell their tales, and I can only wonder what stories the others would have told if only we'd had many more hours in the day. During the whole day there were no discipline issues; the children remained engaged and interested, group after group.

This day was just one example of what it can be like to tell stories in a school setting; the experience was not new to me as this is what I normally experience with school visits. The bottom line is that children want stories; children listen to a well-told tale and children have stories to tell. Storytelling is needed more than ever as an avenue for children to communicate, learn, imagine and create.