The Story-Teller's Start-Up Book
Page 7
Ranke, Kurt, ed. Folktales of Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Seki, Keigo, ed. Folktales of Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library series includes several useful collections from world folk literature. Volumes are hefty, including up to two hundred tales. Some include brief tale notes. Here are a few titles from this series:
Abrahams, Roger D. Afro-American Folktales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Bushnaq, Inea. Arab Folktales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Calvino, Halo. Italian Folktales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Weinreich, Beatrice Silverman and Leonard Wolf. Yiddish Folktales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Learning from Picture Books
The beginning teller may find a shortcut to tale learning by selecting a well-written folktale in picture book format. The illustrations in the picture hook will help fix the story in your imagination. Share this first by reading it aloud to several different groups of children. Then, once the tale has begun to fit you, put the book away and tell it. This technique works well for school librarians who see many classes each week.
Here are a few recent picture books that lend themselves to telling. For a lengthier list see "The Picture Book as Story Source" on pp. 204-08 of Margaret Read MacDonald's Twenty Tellable Tales (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1986).
Aardema, Verna. Traveling to Tondo: A Tale of the Nkundo of Zaire. Illus. by Will Hillenbrand. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
Ata, Te. Baby Rattlesnake. Adapted by Lynn Moroney. Illus. by Veg Reis-burg. San Francisco: Children's Book Press, 1989.
DeFelice, Cynthia C. The Dancing Skeleton. Illus. by Robert Andrew Parker. New York: MacMillan, 1989.
DePaola, Tomie, Fin M'Coul: The Giant of Knockmany Hill. New York: Holiday House, 1981.
Kimmel, Eric A. Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock. Illus. by Janet Stevens. New York: Holiday House, 1988.
Stamm, Claus. Three Strong Women: A Tale from Japan. Illus. by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng. New York: Viking Press, 1990.
Xiong, Blia. Nine-in-One Grr! Grr! Adapted by Cathy Spagnoli. Illus. by Nancy Hom. San Francisco: Children's Book Press, 1989.
l.ists of Tales for Telling
Books about storytelling often include lists of suggested stories for telling. Two recently updated lists which you may find useful are:
Tarusso, Marilyn. Stories: A List of Stories to Tell and Read Aloud. New York: New York Public Library, 1990.
Schimmel, Nancy. "Sisters' Choice." In Just Enough to Make a Story. Berkeley, California: Sisters' Choice Press, 1992.
Learn by Listening
Many audio- and videotapes featuring storytellers are available. Listen to these for devices which may work in your own telling. Do not imitate such tapes, but draw inspiration from them as you develop a style that fits tour own persona. Beginning tellers often find it easy to add to their repertoire by learning stories other tellers have perfected through repeated listenings to story tapes. This is a useful start-up activity for most beginning tellers, but keep in mind that those pieces are sometimes thought of as personal property by the tellers who made the tapes. You would need to receive permission from that teller if you begin to tell for profit later in your career.
Here is a brief selection of tapes and videos I find useful for beginners. Your public library will have these and many more.
* * *
AUDIOTAPES
Greene, Ellin. Elis Piddock Skips in Her Sleep. Albany, New York: A Gentle Wind, 1984. A fine public library storyteller shares a classic Eleanor Farjeon story.
Hayes, Joe. A Heart Full of Turquoise: Pueblo Indian Tales. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Trails West Publishing, n.d. Simple, effective tellings.
Lieberman, Syd. Joseph the Tailor and Other Jewish Tales. Evanston, Illinois: Syd Lieberman, 1988. Told before a live audience.
Lipman, Doug. Tell It With Me. Albany, New York: A Gentle Wind, n.d. Tales for younger children, told to a squiggly class.
VIDEOTAPES
Davis, Donald. The Crack of Dawn. The H.W. Wilson Co. American Storytelling Series, 1986. Creating story from pieces of memory.
Freeman, Barbara and Connie Regan-Blake. No News. New York: The H.W. Wilson Co. American Storytelling Series, 1986. Dynamic examples of tandem telling.
Rubright, Lynn. Baked Potatoes. New York: The H.W. Wilson Co. American Storytelling Series, 1986. How to turn a simple incident into an engaging narrative.
Seago, Billy. Stories from the Attic: The Greedy Cat. Seattle: Sign-a-Vision, 1987.
. Stories from the Attic: The House that Jack Built.
Seattle: Sign-a-Vision, 1987.
. Stories from the Attic: The Magic Pot. Seattle: Sign-a-
Vision, 1987.
Stories in sign language—available in ASL or Signed English—with voice-over. Billy comments on the use of body language and facial expression to convey meaning in storytelling.
Rights, Permissions, and Copyrights
You infringe on someone else's copyright when you use their material to put money in your pocket. If you are telling your own version of a folktale, or if you are telling a literary work in an educational setting for no fee, you are not violating copyright. However, tellers who have worked hard to perfect a tale may not be happy to hear their hard work mimicked by others, so personal consideration should be exercised. Once you begin telling for a fee, or producing tapes or books for sale, permission to use literary material is absolutely required.
Skinrud, Michael E. "Copyright and Storytelling." In The National Storytelling Journal, Winter 1984, 14-19. (Available in reprint for $6.00 from NAPPS, P.O. Box 309, Joneshorough, TN 37659.)
Looking at Stories
Critically
A gift for selection ... comes partly out of experience, the innumerable times of trying out a story and summing up the consequences. But the secret of the gift lies in the sixth sense of the true storyteller. Here is an indefinable something that acts as does the nose for the winetaster, the fingertips for the textile expert, an absolute pitch for the musician. I think one may be born with this; But it is far more likely to become ingrained after years of experience.
—Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller
To develop an eye and an ear for story you will want to read widely. I suggest that you bring home a pile of fine literary story collections and dabble in them until you are steeped in their language. These stories are too difficult for the beginner to tackle, since they must be learned word for word if they are to be retold properly. But wrapping yourself in their lovely rhythm and wording will help you develop a sense for the well-crafted phrase.
Read Sandburg, Farjeon, Kipling, Andersen, Colum. Read them aloud and listen.
Next read among collections prepared by contemporary folklorists that present the tales of living traditional tellers in ethnopoetic form. The collector has tried to set the words on the page in English translation in a way that portrays the actual performance of that teller. This is the sound of the oral teller in performance. Examine these collections carefully.
* * *
Again, read them aloud and listen.
Try the work of contemporary folklorists such as Dennis Tedlock (Finding the Center), Peter Seitel (See So That We May See), or Joan M. Tenenbaum (Dena-ina Sukdu-a: Traditional Stories of the Tanaina). Or read Joseph Jacob's English Folk and Fairy Tales, Diane Wolkstein's The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales, or Richard Chase's Grandfather Tales.
An innate sense for the rhythm and flow of a tale can be gained only through listening again and again. As a beginning teller you will select tales which are already well-written for telling, but later you may want to retell stories from less skillfully written sources. It is then that this grounding in fine story collections will be essential.
Avoiding the Simplified Story
Our children's folktale collections are often rewritings drawing on tale plots found in anthropological collections. They vary with the skill of the author. Beware of oversimplified stories. One of the most common horrors of folktale rewriting is that of the author who writes all of the loveliness out of the tale with the false assumption that this makes it more accessible to young children. Preschool children need to hear fine language just as much as the rest of us. The fact that they haven't heard it before just makes it that much more important that they hear it now.
Here are two segments from "The Gingerbread Boy"—one from an author with a proven ear for language, the other from an educator with an eye for simplification. Never deprive your children of a tale's potential by giving them such "simplified" versions.
Paul Galdone's The Gingerbread Boy reads:
She ran to the oven and opened the door.
Up jumped the Gingerbread Boy.
He hopped down onto the floor,
ran across the kitchen,
out of the door, across the garden,
through the gate,
and down the road as fast as
his gingerbread legs could carry him.
The little old woman and the little old man ran after him,
shouting: "Stop! Stop, little Gingerbread Boy!"
The Gingerbread Boy looked back and
laughed and called out:
"Run! Run! Run!
Catch me if you can!
You can't catch me!
I'm the Gingerbread Boy,
I am! I am!"
And they couldn't catch him.
A simplified version by Jean Warren in her Totline January-February 1989 issue reads:
Suddenly it stood up, hopped out of the pan, then jumped to the floor and ran out the door.
As it ran past the wife, she heard it cry, "Run, run, fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Pancake Man."
The wife tried to catch him but she couldn't.
This simplified version for small children then deletes the pancake man's chanting retorts for the rest of the tale, continuing simply. "He ran past the daughter but the daughter couldn't catch him. He ran past the farmer but the farmer wouldn't catch him." The reteller adds a dog and a cat and eliminates the horse, threshers and mowers. The fox is also eliminated and the Pancake Man is left running at the end. "He ran and ran and ran. Has anybody seen that Pancake Man?"
My quarrel is not with the altered ending, hut with the
* * *
elimination of the rhythmic joy found in the bouncy tellings of almost all folk versions of this tale. Galdone understands this rhythm well and capitalizes on it. Warren ignores it.
Avoiding the Overwritten Story
Many of the folktale collections you will find on your library shelves have been retold by authors with an eye to literary form rather than an ear for the oral tale. These authors will have added lengthy descriptive passages, padding the simple oral tale with verbiage to meet literary criteria. This may make for a fine tale to read aloud, but it does not move easily back into the storytelling format.
Look, for example, at the opening for two versions of "The Tongue Cut Sparrow." The first was prepared by a children's author:
It was autumn, and the dawn was breaking. The forest was afire with the red of maple trees; the cranes glided down to the watery rice-fields to dab for their morning meal; the croaks of the bull-frogs rumbled from the river banks; and Mount Fuji, wreathed in clouds, breathed idly and contentedly on the distant skyline. It was a season and a morning dear to the old woodcutter's heart, and neither his poverty nor the sharp tongue of his irascible wife disturbed his tranquillity and happiness as slowly, with bent back and grasping a stout staff in his hand, he tramped through the forest to cut the day's fuel.'
The second passage gives us the words of a folk teller, translated by Japanese scholar Keigo Seki:
Well, this was long ago. There was an old man and his wife. One day the old man went to the mountains to cut firewood.'
Rather than work at cutting tales back to a tellable form, look for tales such as Seki's which have not been so far removed from the storyteller's tongue. Bibliographies for this chapter and for "Finding the Story" (page 67) suggest several such collections.
Finding Other Variants of Your Story
Sometimes you will discover a story that excites you, but the language or the story development seems not quite as you would like it. If you are working with a folktale, you may be able to locate other tellings of the same tale. No two tellers give the story in exactly the same way. Another teller's version may suit your needs better than the one you have in hand. Indexes are available to help you search for these tale variants. Here are two indexes which you will find in most public libraries:
The Storyteller's Sourcebook: A Subject, Title, and Motif-
Index to Folklore Collections for Children by Margaret Read
MacDonald (Detroit: Neal-Schuman / Gale Research, 1982).
The Storyteller's Sourcebook allows you to search by story title or through an extensive story subject index. This book is arranged according to the classification system of the Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966). This means that similar tales appear side by side in the motif-index. So once you find your tale, you can also scan information about similar tales from other cultures. Each tale is described and variants from around the world are cited. For tellers who become seriously hooked on folktale searches, there are many scholarly type and motif indexes arranged like The Storyteller's Sourcebook. Some of these are listed in Twenty Tellable Tales by the same author (New York: The H.W. Wilson Co., 1986).
You will want to get your hands on The Storyteller's Sourcebook and browse through it for a while to become familiar with its arrangement. Tellers enjoy reading through t he pages of tale descriptions and wondering about the many variants of their favorite tales. For example, thirty-six variants
* * *
of the Cinderella story are described.
Index to Fairy Tales: Including Folklore, Legends, and Myths in Collections by Norma Olin Ireland and Joseph W. Sprug (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, various).
This series originated as Index to Fairy Tales, Myths, and Legends by Mary Huse Eastman (Westwood, Massachusetts: Faxon, various). These indexes were begun in 1926 by Eastman and have been updated periodically by Ireland. The early volumes have tale title entries only, but since the 1949-1972 edition, a subject index has been included. These indexes include neither a motif approach nor tale descriptions, but they do include some titles which are not included in The Storyteller's Sourcebook.
Retelling Your Own Story
When, after reading, listening, and telling for a while, you need to begin rewriting stories for your own telling use, you may want to check with the advice of other tellers on this difficult task. See the bibliography at the end of this chapter for sources which may help you.
Exploring Other Genres
This book starts you on the road to storytelling with a few simple folktales. These are tales that my listeners have loved, but they may or may not match your personal needs. Examine the many materials listed in the bibliographies here and listen to tapes of other tellers.
Personal stories
Certainly you will want to add some personal stories to your repertoire. If you work with children there is much you can share with them informally from your own past that will have meaning and interest for them. Whether you polish this material into "stories" or simply share them as informal memories, make a point of searching your past for material which should be passed on.
One way to shape such material into a "story" is to share it with several different friends informally in conversation. As the story begins to take shape and become more "tellable," set aside time to work with the story. Ask yourself what you want the story to carry to the listener. Try various ways to achieve your ends and select those which seem to be most ef
fective. Tape your own oral telling of the story, transcribe it, and edit the tale in transcript form. Different aspects of the tale will emerge as you transfer it from oral form to written and back to oral again.
Literary stories
You will definitely want to add a few literary pieces to your repertoire. These will require memorization and hard work, but they are worth it. Some tellers will find these pieces more fulfilling than the telling of folktales and will build an entire repertoire of literary material. Others will prefer the more open-ended story-play allowed by the folktale. Whichever genre you prefer, know that your selection is good: if you enjoy it, it is right for your telling.
The telling of myths
The world's mythology is a fascinating source of story-lore. Unfortunately for beginners, most of these tales are available only in literary retellings. Adapting them for an oral telling requires a skilled ear and a clear eye. Read widely in collections of myth and listen to other tellers to observe the choices they have made in adapting this material for telling. Then be prepared to devote serious critical effort to your tale preparation as you begin to tell in this genre.
Historical stories
This story genre also requires considerable preparation. The stories do not come to you "ready-to-tell." Often, however, it is possible to find pieces of the story you wish to tell already framed charmingly by local elders. Published oral histories are rich in such material, as are some local histories. Letters may also bear material which moves easily to the tongue. By carefully selecting and combining such material,
* * *
several storytellers have produced intriguing and moving historical storytellings.
In defense of the folktale
My colleagues sometimes suggest that those elaborate, soul-searched, personal stories and the hard-honed literary pieces which they construct and perform for adults are a higher art form, somehow on a different plane from the work of simply "telling stories to children." Nonsense. Art is not judged by "difficulty in preparation" or "length of presentation." Art is judged by the ear and the heart. A simply told parable may stand above all of these elaborately developed twenty-minute recitations. And the simple "children's" folk-tale which you carry may well be the artistic gem of another culture's adult community.