What Works-Stand Up and Deliver

At the Brighton Park Branch, in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago, we've been hosting preteen and teen storytelling programs for the past year and a half—and there's no end in sight. To our surprise, what originally began as a short-term program for young people has turned into an ongoing success. How did that happen?

For years, our library offered an after-school program, matching middle school readers with young children. The young kids liked hearing the older kids read stories, and the older ones enjoyed doing it. But later on, some of the older students told me that they wished they could actually perform the stories. That gave me an idea.

Thinking back to the national storytelling festivals that I had attended years earlier, I had a hunch that the older kids would get a kick out of learning how to tell stories the same way that trained storytellers do. So in 1999, we applied for a state grant to hire a professional storyteller and to purchase some related materials. We received $4,325. We used $2,715 of that to hire Marie Ringenberg, a storytelling pro, for seven two-hour sessions, and with the remaining money, we purchased books and audiotapes. We also came up with a goal for the kids. At the end of seven weeks, they would each perform a story at the Harold Washington Library, in downtown Chicago, as part of the National Children's Book Week festivities. But first, after receiving the grant, we posted flyers in the library, announcing the upcoming storytelling sessions. Most important, I visited nearby schools and told middle schoolers all about the project. As a result, we recruited 21 students, ages 10 to 14, for our first workshop. Although we had anticipated that we'd have trouble recruiting boys, there were almost as many boys as girls.

We discovered that most of the kids who showed up had little idea what actual storytelling involved. That's where Marie came in. She immediately grabbed their attention by telling the story of "Mary Calhoun and the Dead Man," a tale about a young girl who drags a dead man through a graveyard. As Marie acted out the story, all eyes and ears were on her—and the students had their first taste of storytelling. In subsequent weeks, Marie used pantomimes and songs, such as "Father Abraham," to get the group relaxed. And every Tuesday, we sang the same silly song—Marie had made up one about fast-food chains—until it became our theme song. Along the way, Marie gently taught the children how to use varied facial expressions and voices to tell a story, and how to use physical gestures to convey emotions.

By the program's third or fourth week, the students had each selected a story they thought they might like to perform—stories such as "King Midas and the Golden Touch" and "Sody Salleratus." We let the kids pick their own stories from anthologies of folktales and scary stories that we purchased with the grant money. Then, we photocopied the stories so they could practice reading their stories aloud five times a day to family members or friends.

At the end of a week, if the kids still liked their stories, Marie gave them tips to help them tell their stories better. For example, she used worksheets that required the students to analyze their stories and describe the characters. Marie also asked the kids questions, such as what happened after that? And she took away their photocopies and had them tell their stories without looking at a script. After three or four weeks of practice, the kids were ready. Not surprisingly, when it came time to perform before an audience of parents, peers, and younger kids, our young storytellers did a terrific job.

Since then, I've been offering storytelling programs, doing the same kinds of things I saw Marie do. (Two books that I've found very helpful are Children Tell Stories: A Teaching Guide [R. C. Owens, 1990] by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss and Theater Games for Young Performers: Improvisations and Exercises for Developing Acting Skills [Meriwether, 1985] by Maria C. Novelly.) Each time a new session begins, I hold my breath to see if any students will come. But, of course, they do. And each time, I'm impressed all over again by how well our young storytellers eventually do.