Story-Retelling Aids
Children love to retell stories to each other, and aids help them recall parts of the story or focus on the sequence of events. One skillful kindergarten teacher discovered the power of a story box to turn children into storytellers:
October 20: I sat in front of the class and introduced the cast of characters for Galdone's The Little Red Hen. These were all stuffed animal toys and I used an invisible seed, some tall grasses, a tiny bag of white flour, and a loaf of bread for props. At the end of my puppet show I boxed up the cast and props and labeled the box "The Little Red Hen." I put it in the reading corner for anyone who wanted to tell that story. Throughout the morning small groups of children made time to check it all out. Some just fingered the plush toys, examined the bag of flour, and smelled the loaf of unsliced bread. But Allison organized Jamie, Jeffrey, Viviana, and Joey each to be an animal while she spoke the part of the hen. This play was for themselves, not demanding or even needing an audience; the children were unaware of observers. The box is a great idea; there seems to be great ceremony in unpacking and packing up the kit. (Jinx Bohstedt, "Old Tales for Young Tellers," Outlook no. 33 (Fall, 1979): 34.)
Out of the dress-up clothes in her classroom, one kindergarten teacher gathered men's boots, pants, a shirt, gloves, and a hat that children manipulated as they retold Linda Williams's The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. A cardboard pumpkin took the place of a real one, and this collection was boxed and kept in the play corner for the month of October.
Felt boards provide another chance for children to practice telling stories more easily. Once children have seen a teacher tell a story using the felt board, they are eager to use the props or to make their own figures to tell the story. Silhouettes placed on an overhead projector create yet another kind of board story. Where color is important, such as in Leo Lionni's Little Blue and Little Yellow, tinted acetate unmounted or mounted behind a cutout shape may be used.
A roller-box movie is a third retelling aid. Each child draws a different important scene, the pictures are arranged sequentially, taped together, and then mounted on rollers. As each picture passes on the "screen," the child who drew the picture tells that part of the story. Needless to say, roller movies require children to talk through what scenes need to appear, who should present what, and so on. Pictures should be reinforced with masking tape on the back before they are attached to each other. The strip of pictures is then attached and rolled onto two fat dowel rods. The rods are inserted on either side of a decorated box or carton, and the movie is scrolled past the audience.
Using story-retelling aids is a special help to young children and students who have heard few stories read aloud. By practicing storytelling, children develop a sense of how stories are supposed to sound and how stories work. The teacher may introduce and demonstrate any of these aids, but it is in the making of their own projects that children utilize the widest variety of skills. They learn to return to the story for information and confirmation, to extract important points, to sequence events, to become sensitive to the language of the storyteller, and to "sound like a book." Older children also have the opportunity to practice their summarizing skills as they negotiate what to tell or depict from longer stories and chapter books.
Galdone, Paul. The Little Red Hen. Clarion, 1985.
Lionni, Leo. Little Blue and Little Yellow. Astor-Honor, 1959.
Williams, Linda. The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. Illustrated by Megan Lloyd. Harper & Row, 1986.
Fooling with Folktales, Fables, and Myths
Children's literature offers many examples of how authors and illustrators reinterpret traditional literature for new audiences. Some illustrators modify the sense of a well-known tale by preserving the story but changing the setting. Roberto Innocenti took Charles Perrault's "Cinderella" and elegantly placed it in post–World War I Britain. Anthony Browne updated the Grimms's "Hansel and Gretel" by changing the setting to a bleak present-day city.
But many more authors and illustrators take a well-known folktale and change the point of view, mix up the characters, alter the theme, or tell what happened next. Jon Scieszka plays with traditional forms and characters in books like The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The Book That Jack Wrote. His The Frog Prince Continued is a sequel in which a dissatisfied prince seeks witches from other folktales who can change him back into a frog. His The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A. Wolf shifts the story to the wolf's point of view, as does The Wolf's Story: What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood by Toby Forward. Babette Cole's Prince Cinders and Bernice Myers's Sidney Rella and the Glass Sneaker present familiar patterns in new stories, each with a modern boy protagonist, while Ellen Jackson's Cinder Edna portrays a take-charge Cinderella. Jane Yolen's Sleeping Ugly plays with our expectations about folktales by giving the ugly but kind girl the prince and leaving the beautiful princess asleep to be used as a hat rack. Other authors and illustrators make characters from well-known stories interact with one another. In Mark Sperring's Fairytale Cake a host of character's from fairy tails and nursery rhymes bake and deliver an enormous cake to a lucky birthday boy. Young children will enjoy identifying the characters they know and love. Colin and Jaqui Hawkins have composed the daily paper for the fairy tale village in their book Fairytale News—the delivery boy is none other than Jack the Beanstalk. In Beware the Storybook Wolves by Lauren Child, a young boy needs to think fast when his mother leave the bedtime story open on the nightstand and two wolves climb out. He is aided by Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and hindered by The Wicked Witch. In a series of books, including Yours Truly, Goldilocks by Alma Flora Ada, fairy tale characters correspond with one another in delightfully funny letters.
Children who have been steeped in traditional literature can write wonderful parodies and sophisticated takeoffs. A sixth-grade class studied numerous Greek myths and discussed their characteristics. One boy's story perfectly captures aspects of myth such as a crisp beginning, few characters, the explanation of the origins of an animal, and the often deadly and arbitrary action of the gods:
Princess Skunkina and Olfactor
Olfactor, the goddess of scent, was the sweetest smelling immortal around. She was the goddess who gave everything its scent. Olfactor was very nice and sweet when it came to mortals.
Princess Skunkina, known as the one with white hair, was very jealous of Olfactor because she thought she smelled better than Olfactor.
Princess Skunkina assembled the town and made an announcement. "I am the new goddess of scent. I am the sweetest smelling person alive. You will now worship me, not Olfactor who smells like a herd of cows in comparison to me."
Of course, Olfactor was enraged. She was so angry she decided she'd pay Princess Skunkina a little visit herself. (She rarely visited mortals.) Olfactor flew down from the heavens and spotted the one with white hair in her garden of trees. Olfactor came up to the princess and cast a spell upon her. "You thought you smelled better than me. I'll see to it that you never dethrone a god or goddess again." … Olfactor watched as she was dying and took pity over her. She decided to let her live, but not as a mortal, but a putrid-smelling animal with her beautiful white hair in a stripe down her back. (Michael Polson, Grade 6, George Mason Elementary School, Alexandria, Virginia, Susan Steinberg, teacher.)
Fables also represent a discrete and highly patterned genre of literature that children can experiment with. Children ought to have many experiences with the original fables by Aesop and La Fontaine before trying their own hands at it. Working backwards, from the moral to the story, one group of 12-year-olds decided to create other modern versions of fables. They thought of appropriate stories for such well-known morals as "Beauty is only skin deep" and "Don't cry wolf unless you mean it."
Ada, Alma Flor. Yours Truly, Goldilocks. Illustrated by Leslie Tryon. Atheneum, 1998.
Child. Lauren. Beware the Storybook Wolves. Arthur A. Levine, 2000.
Cole, Babette. Prince Cinders. Putnam, 1987.
———. Princess Smartypants. Putnam, 1987.
Forward, Toby. The Wolf's Story: What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood. Illustrated by Izhar Cohen. Candlewick, 2005.
Hawkins, Colin & Jaqui. Fairytale News. Candlewick, 2004.
Jackson, Ellen. Cinder Edna. Illustrated by Kevin O'Malley. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1994.
Myers, Bernice. Sidney Rella and the Glass Sneaker. Macmillan, 1985.
Scieszka, Jon. The Book That Jack Wrote. Illustrated by Daniel Adel. Viking, 1994.
———. The Frog Prince Continued. Illustrated by Steve Johnson. Viking, 1991.
———. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Illustrated by Lane Smith. Viking, 1992.
———. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A. Wolf. Illustrated by Lane Smith. Penguin, 1989.
Sperring, Mark. The Fairytale Cake. Illustrated by Jonathan Langley. Scholastic, 2005.
Yolen, Jane. Sleeping Ugly. Illustrated by Diane Stanley. Putnam, 1981.
Heroes
As a result of the events of September 11, the concept of heroism is forefront in our attention. Engage you students in a discussion of heroism. What does it mean to be a hero? What do we learn about the nature of heroism from traditional tales? In today's world does being a hero mean something different that what we may guess it meant in ancient times? Is heroism external or internal? Who do you consider to be a hero? Why? Joseph Campbell's exposition of the hero in The Hero's Journey and The Hero with a Thousand Faces might serve as a launching point for your discussion. You may also enjoy reading stories about true-life young heroes in T.A. Barron's The Hero's Trail: A Guide for a Heroic Life.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero's Journey. Wellspring, 2002. (DVD)
________. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Bollingen, 1972.
Barron, T.A. The Hero's Trail: A Guide for a Heroic Life. Philomel, 2002.
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