Part 28 (1/2)

ST. LOUIS

In the playgrounds one regularly employed storyteller, who also a.s.sists in directing the games, tells stories throughout the season. Storytelling is also carried on by playground a.s.sistants and by volunteer storytellers. The interest shown by parents who frequently join the story hour groups in the parks, is considered a significant gain in sustaining neighborhood interest in the playground.

In one settlement house, the head worker meets the storytellers at the beginning of the season and plans and directs the work for the entire year.

Storytelling in the St. Louis Public Library has been carried on for several years by children's librarians of branch libraries who have visited playgrounds, settlements, and public schools, as visiting storytellers, and have told stories at mothers' clubs and teachers' meetings. Since February, 1910, it has been under the direction of the supervisor of work with children, who was formerly one of the visiting storytellers and a.s.sistants to the supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library.

Storytelling is regarded by her as a valuable aid in the unification of the work with children in a system of libraries.

STORYTELLING IN OTHER COMMUNITIES

The reports received represent only a small part of the storytelling that is being done in different parts of the country.

In New Jersey, the organizer of the State Library Commission has found her ability to tell stories and to choose books containing a direct appeal to the people who are to read them, or to listen to the reading of them, an open sesame in the pine woods districts, the farming communities, and the fis.h.i.+ng villages, where grown people listen as eagerly as children. In a paper ent.i.tled, ”The Place, the Man, and the Book,” Miss Sarah B. Askew gives a vivid picture of the establishment of a library in a fis.h.i.+ng village. (Proceedings of the American Library a.s.sociation. 1908.)[4]

[4] Reprinted as a pamphlet by The H. W. Wilson Company.

Recognizing a similar need for the interpretation of books to the communities where libraries had already been established, the Iowa Library Commission appointed in 1909 an advisory children's librarian, who is also a professional storyteller and lecturer upon children's literature.

In the Public Lecture courses of New York City, it has been found that storytelling programs composed of folk tales draw large audiences of grown people who enjoy the stories quite as much as do the children.

In various inst.i.tutions for adults as well as for children, where the library has been a mere collection of books that counted for little or nothing in the daily life of the inst.i.tution, storytelling is making the books of living interest, and is giving to children, and to grown men and women, new sources of pleasure by taking them out of themselves and beyond the limitations of a prescribed and monotonous existence. Just as the games and folk dances are making their contribution to inst.i.tutional life, so storytelling is bringing the play spirit in literature to those whose imaginations have been starved by long years of neglect, and is showing that what is needed is not an occasional entertainment, but the joy of possessing literature itself.

Professional storytellers who have recently visited towns and cities of the Pacific Coast, the Middle-Western, the Southern, and the Eastern States, not covered by this report, bear testimony to an interest in storytelling that seems to be as genuine as it is widespread. It is apparent that more thought is being given to the subject than ever before. Wherever storytelling has been introduced by a ”born storyteller” who has succeeded in kindling sparks of local talent capable of sustaining interest and accomplis.h.i.+ng results, storytelling is bound to be a success. All reports testify to the need of a well defined plan for storytelling related to the purpose and the aims of the inst.i.tution which undertakes it, and to the varying capacities and temperaments of the persons who are to carry it on.

THE SPECIAL STORYTELLER AND THE REGULAR a.s.sISTANT

The professional storyteller has played a large part in the successful establishment of storytelling, and is destined to play a still larger part in the future development of the work in playgrounds and other inst.i.tutions, by raising the standards of the playground library, or settlement worker, who is expected to tell stories. This she will do not by elaborating methods and artifices to be imitated, but by frank criticism of native ability, by inspiring courses in story literature, and by proper training of the much neglected speaking voice.

The sooner we cease to believe that ”anybody can tell a story”

the better for storytelling in every inst.i.tution undertaking it.

A candidate for a given position may be required to have storytelling ability, but no a.s.sistant should be required to tell stories as a part of her duties unless she can interest a group of children who have voluntarily come to listen to her stories.

Repeating simplified versions of stories is not storytelling.

Exercises in memorizing may be as helpful to the storyteller as the practice of scales to the piano player, but neither is to be regarded as a source of pleasure to the listener. Listening as one of a group is a valuable experience in the training of an a.s.sistant who is telling stories in the playground, the library, or the settlement. Herein lies the advantage of a visiting storyteller who does not take the place of the playground or library a.s.sistant, but who enlivens the program for the children and makes it possible for the regular a.s.sistant to listen occasionally and to profit by the experience. (The professional listener is delightfully characterized in ”Miss m.u.f.fet's Christmas Party,” by Dr. Samuel McChord Crothers.)

LIST OF FIFTY STORIES AND A LIST OF BOOKS FOR READING ON THE PLAYGROUND

The outline sent to the members of the Committee on Storytelling called for the mention of specific stories and for personal experience in group formation, taking into account age and s.e.x, time and place, and for a statement of results, in so far as such results could be stated. From five hundred different stories mentioned a composite list of ”Fifty Stories for the Playground”

has been made. This list is chiefly composed of fairy and folk tales, Indian legends, and animal stories, as making the strongest appeal to playground groups and to library groups unaccustomed to listening to stories.

It also represents the story literature most easily commanded by the storyteller who has not read widely. Stories from the Norse and Greek Mythology, from the Niebelungen Lied, the Arthurian legends, and from Robin Hood; stories of Roland and of Charlemagne; stories from the Faerie Queene, and from the Canterbury Tales; historical and biographical stories are generously represented in the five hundred t.i.tles, but such stories should not be attempted without sufficient reading and feeling for the subject to enable the storyteller to bring it vividly and naturally before such a group as she is likely to meet in her daily experience.

Satisfactory festival stories are reported as exceedingly difficult to find. Several stories growing out of personal experiences, such as a ”Christmas in Germany,” a ”May Day in England,” ”Fourth of July in the Garden of Warwick Castle,” (The Warwick Pageant of 1900) are mentioned. Atmosphere and festival spirit are often lacking in stories listed under Festivals and Holidays.