For the Story Teller: Chapter 9 - Stoty Telling an Aid to Verbal Expression

NEARLY all children find fluent speech as readily as birds find song and flowers find perfume. Occasionally, there is a “different” child, though, who through shyness, slow motor reaction or a retarded brain development has difficulty in using words as a medium of expressing himself.

There is always the problem, too, of the foreign-born child. We find him a patient, tongue-tied little scrap of humanity clad in the garb of Italy or Russia or Germany clinging to his mother’s skirts when the big vessel docks and as dazed as she is at the babel of strange speech that deafens, stuns him. Then we see him in school and his linguistic problem becomes more complicated. He is put into a class where the ordinarily complex matters of reading, writing, and ciphering are made increasingly more complex because they are presented to him in a foreign language. The school curriculum leaves small space in the day for teaching a child to talk. Tony, discouraged, baffled, puzzled, drifts farther and farther into his great silence and is dubbed a dunce, because he doesn’t know what his teacher is talking about.

What shall we do with Tony who forms a big unit in our ever increasing foreign population? How shall we quickest help him and every child to that ready expression through speech that means power, efficiency, self-control in later years?

There was my own, special Tony—a quaint little man of five in yellow breeches, a green shirt and a fur cap, which latter he persisted in wearing during his entire school day for fear that some one might steal it. Tony was, “out of Naples.” His melting brown eyes danced with delight at a bit of crimson paper, a gold orange produced as a model for the painting lesson, a red rose that meant a sense game. But Tony’s warm, red lips remained persistently closed. Days melted into weeks and then were months and still Tony was dumb. Ideas he had. Words he had not, although I had tried daily to teach him to say, good morning, good-by, ball, clay, blocks and like words.

One day Tony electrified me, though. He was always an attentive, close listener during my story hour that ended the morning. Because the children were, in the majority, foreign, I selected short, repetitional stories for telling. The children were fascinated with the quaint old folk tale of “The Teeny Tiny Lady.” As I told it, they had formed a habit of joining me when I reached a familiar phrase.

“Tell the Teeny Tiny Lady,” they begged again and as I finished the story, Tony’s eyes danced, his lips parted—

“Once upon a time there was a lady, who lived in a house in a village,” he began in clear, pure English. With a little help he almost retold the story. It was amazing, but through the inspiration of the other children’s enthusiastic story interest, the many repetitions of the story and its simple, cumulative structure Tony had learned nearly a hundred words. He talked after that, and he told us stories. The story had unloosed his tongue.

Stories help children to verbal expression.

In the case of a foreign child who must be taught English, or the American-born child who is shy and so lacking in the power of expressing himself through words, we will use the old folk tale that repeats its words and phrasing with happy familiarity and so teaches speech.

It will not be necessary to make the child or group of children feel that the story is being used as a lesson in English.

Just select the right story.

Tell it over and over again, as long as the children are interested in it—and you will find that their interest will exhaust yours.

And encourage the children to tell the story with you.

This method spells success in using the story to increase a child’s vocabulary.

Certain stories stimulate the child to repeat certain jingles or phrases with the story teller. This explains their popularity and adds to their value. The good old cumulative story of the “Cat and the Mouse” is built around a nonsense ditty:

“First she leaped, and then she ran,
’Till she came to the cow and thus began.”

After a child learns and repeats this verse he begins to add to it the sentences of the story that precede and follow it. When the foreign child is able to tell the last paragraph of the story:—

“So the good baker gave the mouse some bread; the mouse gave the bread to the butcher who gave him some meat; the mouse gave the meat to the farmer who gave him an armful of hay; the mouse gave the hay to the cow and the cow gave the mouse a saucer of milk for the cat. Then the cat drank the milk and gave the mouse his little long tail. And they went on playing in the malt house.”

—he has acquired a good working vocabulary of English.

So there are a score of similar repetitional stories that help a child to learn ready speech. The Greedy Cat repeats the tale of his prowess:

“I have eaten my friend the mouse. I have eaten an old woman, and a man and a donkey, and the King and all his elephants. What is to hinder my eating you, too?”

Chicken Little bewails to every one she meets:

"The sky is falling."

And in answer to the query “How do you know?” she assures her questioner:

“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell upon my tail.”

In Maud Lindsay’s story of “The Little Gray Pony” there is a delightfully interpolated jingle that repeats itself and adds to itself in such fascinating fashion that children cannot resist saying with the story teller:

and its answer:

Ever popular Little Half Chick with his happy-go-lucky, daring journey to Madrid compels children to tell his story as he “hoppity kicks” through his adventures. The Three Pigs with their three ever interesting fates help a child to do his own story telling. There is an exhaustless fund of folk lore to draw upon that has few words in its story construction, frequent and happy repetitions of those words, and inspiration for a child to make those words a part of his own vocabulary.

These bits of repeated phrasing in a story, scraps of incorporated lyrics and jingles and built-up cumulative paragraphs are like the beads that help to make the child’s necklace. On them he strings the thread of the story narrative, making it so thoroughly a part of his mental life that he is able to give it out again in the remembered words of the story. Long after the loved, “huffing and puffing” of the wolf in the story of the “Three Little Pigs” has become only a memory, a child uses the words, furze, blazing, scramble, fortune—and a hundred other words that came to him in this happy story connection and so into his every-day conversation.

The older child who has passed the nursery tale and folk lore turnstile in his story road finds help to a greater power in verbal expression by means of the beautifully written story, told in its original pure phrasing by the story teller and enriching him because of its wonderful English. A truly well-wrought story suffers often at the hands of the story teller. It isn’t necessary in telling such a story to bring it down to the plane of the children’s intelligence; rather we will bring the children up to its heights of beautiful imagery and mellow phrasing.

In telling Henry Ward Beecher’s story of “The Anxious Leaf,” in “Norwood,” the story should be memorized by the story teller. No word of its vivid picturing should be lost. It is a short story so this method of preparing it for telling will not be irksome. A little girl six years old who had been told this story several times was out walking one fall with her mother. She picked up a dead leaf, from the ground, and holding it tenderly in her hand, she repeated softly:

“Then the little leaf began to want to go and it grew very beautiful in thinking about it.

“And a little puff of wind came and tossed it like a spark of fire in the air and it fell gently down under the edge of the fence among hundreds of other leaves; and it fell into a dream and never waked up to tell what it dreamed about—”

This child’s vocabulary had been deeply enriched by a story.

In Laura Richards’ stories we find pure English that will help children. In Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Stories” and the “Just So Stories” there is virile wording that every child needs. Dean Hodges’ “Bible Stories” preserve for children the line phrasing of the Hebrews as almost no other Bible story teller has succeeded in doing. Hans Christian Andersen’s best translators have kept for us his matchless word painting. Such stories as these teach a child purer use of English. Eugene Field’s few child stories; “The Legend of Claus,” “The Mouse and the Moonbeam,” “The Maple Leaf and the Violet” sing in their classic wording. No child can hear them without having his vocabulary enriched.

It is quite possible to accomplish a great deal through story telling, not only in teaching English to the child who is foreign born or dormant mentally, but in giving the average child new and more colorful examples of word painting than he has heard before.

The steps in story telling for verbal expression in children are:

Selection. The story must be worth while telling from the point of view of its phrasing. In the case of the child who really needs to be taught to talk, short, rhymed or cumulative tales are useful. With older children we will select those beautiful examples of classic story telling that should form part of a child’s mental life and so help him to express himself in pure diction.

Presentation. These stories that are selected by the story teller as being particularly adapted to English teaching should be most carefully prepared and presented happily, compellingly, and in their exact, original form with almost no variation in subsequent telling so that they may present good models to the children.

Repetition. A story selected for its English value should have frequent repetitions that the children may become very familiar with it and gain the power to repeat it themselves, or at least learn certain parts of it, not as a task but naturally, inspirationally.

STORIES THAT HELP A CHILD TO VERBAL EXPRESSION

There was once a little Lady Woodpecker—such a trim, tidy little Lady Woodpecker—who wore always a natty red bonnet, and a white apron and who lived in a hole in a big Pine Tree. Her house was cozy and comfortable, all lined with moss and wool, and protected by a little brown bark door so that it was cool in the summer time and warm when the winter winds blew.

But the little Lady Woodpecker was a selfish bird and she never, never asked any other birds to come and visit with her in her house in the Pine Tree.

In the next tree to the little Lady Woodpecker lived a Fluffy Sparrow. His nest was loosely built and untidy and it rested insecurely in a fork of a tree so that the wind blew it this way and that way. This was because all sparrows are poor nest builders and it was not the Fluffy Sparrow’s fault at all. One day there was an unusually heavy storm and down from the tree blew the nest. So the Sparrow had now no home.

Then the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered beside the little brown bark door above the little Lady Woodpecker and said:

“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the red bonnet, have pity on me and take me into your house, for the rain falls and I am very, very cold.”

But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped with her bill on the wall of her house and answered:

“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am cooking juniper berries for a batch of pies. Come again some other time and perhaps I will let you in.”

So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the rain made him very, very cold.

The next day the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and said:

“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the red bonnet, have pity on me and take me into your house, for the cold and cruel wind blows and it ruffles my feathers.”

But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped again with her bill on the wall of her house and answered:

“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am washing the pot in which I cooked a batch of juniper berries for a batch of pies. Come again some other time and perhaps I will let you in.”

So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the cold and cruel wind ruffled his feathers.

The day after that the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and said:

“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker, have pity on me and take me into your house, for the biting frost nips my feet.”

But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped again with her bill on the wall of her house and answered:

“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am making the crust for my batch of juniper berry pies. Come again some other time and perhaps I will let you in.”

So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the biting frost nipped his feet.

But the fourth day the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered once again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and said:

“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the little red bonnet, have pity on me and take me into your house, for the snow blinds me.”

But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped very hard with her bill on the wall of her house and answered:

“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am cleaning my floor before I sit down, all by myself, to eat my juniper berry pies.”

So the blinding frost blinded the Fluffy Sparrow’s eyes.

Then the last day of all the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and he said:

“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the little red bonnet, please have pity on me and take me into your house, for I do not like the rain and the wind and the frost and the snow.”

But the little Lady Woodpecker did not answer the Fluffy Sparrow. And the Fluffy Sparrow lifted one claw and poked open the little bark door and he saw that no one was inside. The little Lady Woodpecker was away buying a key with which to lock her door while she ate her batch of juniper berry pies.

So the Fluffy Sparrow went inside the house in the tree that was so cozy and comfortable because it was lined with moss and wool. There he was sheltered from the rain and the wind and the frost and the snow. He ate up all the batch of juniper berry pies.

When the little Lady Woodpecker came home the Fluffy Sparrow was living in her house and she had to find herself a new one because she had been such a selfish bird.

Once upon a time there was a little White Rabbit with two beautiful long pink ears and two bright red eyes and four soft little feet—such a pretty little White Rabbit, but he wasn’t happy.

Just think, this little White Rabbit wanted to be somebody else instead of the nice little rabbit that he was.

When Mr. Bushy Tail, the gray squirrel, went by, the little White Rabbit would say to his Mammy:

“Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a long gray tail like Mr. Bushy Tail’s.”

And when Mr. Porcupine went by, the little White Rabbit would say to his Mammy:

“Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a back full of bristles like Mr. Porcupine’s.”

And when Miss Puddle-Duck went by in her two little red rubbers, the little White Rabbit would say:

“Oh, Mammy, I wish I had a pair of red rubbers like Miss Puddle-Duck’s.”

So he went on and on wishing until his Mammy was clean tired out with his wishing and Old Mr. Ground Hog heard him one day.

Old Mr. Ground Hog is very wise indeed, so he said to the little White Rabbit:

“Why don’t you-all go down to Wishing Pond, and if you look in the water at yourself and turn around three times in a circle, you-all will get your wish.”

So the little White Rabbit trotted off, all alone by himself through the woods until he came to a little pool of green water lying in a low tree stump, and that was the Wishing Pond. There was a little, little bird, all red, sitting on the edge of the Wishing Pond to get a drink, and as soon as the little White Rabbit saw him he began to wish again:

“Oh, I wish I had a pair of little red wings!” he said. Just then he looked in the Wishing Pond and he saw his little white face. Then he turned around three times and something happened. He began to have a queer feeling in his shoulders, like he felt in his mouth when he was cutting his teeth. It was his wings coming through. So he sat all day in the woods by the Wishing Pond waiting for them to grow, and, by and by, when it was almost sundown, he started home to see his Mammy and show her, because he had a beautiful pair of long, trailing red wings.

But by the time he reached home it was getting dark, and when he went in the hole at the foot of a big tree where he lived, his Mammy didn’t know him. No, she really and truly did not know him, because, you see, she had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all her life. And so the little White Rabbit had to go out again, because his Mammy wouldn’t let him get into his own bed. He had to go out and look for some place to sleep all night.

He went and went until he came to Mr. Bushy Tail’s house, and he rapped on the door and said:

“Please, kind Mr. Bushy Tail, may I sleep in your house all night?”

But Mr. Bushy Tail opened his door a crack and then he slammed it tight shut again. You see he had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all his life.

So the little White Rabbit went and went until he came to Miss Puddle-Duck’s nest down by the marsh and he said:

“Please, kind Miss Puddle-Duck, may I sleep in your nest all night?”

But Miss Puddle-Duck poked her head up out of her nest just a little way and then she shut her eyes and stretched her wings out so far that she covered her whole nest.

You see she had never seen a rabbit with red wings in all her life.

So the little White Rabbit went and went until he came to Old Mr. Ground Hog’s hole and Old Mr. Ground Hog let him sleep with him all night, but the hole had beech nuts spread all over it. Old Mr. Ground Hog liked to sleep on them, but they hurt the little White Rabbit’s feet and made him very uncomfortable before morning.

When it came morning, the little White Rabbit decided to try his wings and fly a little, so he climbed up on a hill and spread his wings and sailed off, but he landed in a low bush all full of prickles, and his four feet got mixed up with the twigs so he couldn’t get down.

“Mammy, Mammy, Mammy, come and help me!” he called.

His Mammy didn’t hear him, but Old Mr. Ground Hog did, and he came and helped the little White Rabbit out of the prickly bush.

“Don’t you-all want your red wings?” Mr. Ground Hog asked.

“No, no!” said the little White Rabbit.

“Well,” said the Old Ground Hog, “why don’t you-all go down to the Wishing Pond and wish them off again?”

So the little White Rabbit went down to the Wishing Pond and he saw his face in it. Then he turned around three times, and, sure enough, his red wings were gone. Then he went home to his Mammy, who knew him right away and was so glad to see him and he never, never wished to be something different from what he really was again.