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FOR THE STORY TELLER


      *      *      *      *      *      *

BOOKS BY

CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY

    DAILY PROGRAM OF GIFT AND OCCUPATION WORK
    FOR THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
    FIRELIGHT STORIES
    STORIES AND RHYMES FOR A CHILD
    SONGS OF HAPPINESS

      *      *      *      *      *      *


FOR THE STORY TELLER

Story Telling and Stories to Tell

by

CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY


[Illustration]






1913
Milton Bradley Company
Springfield, Mass.

New York     Boston     Philadelphia     Atlanta     San Francisco

Copyright, 1913,
By Milton Bradley Company,
Springfield, Mass.




PREFACE


The new-old art of story telling is being rediscovered. We are finding
that the children’s daily story hour in school, in the neighborhood
house, and at home is a real force for mental and moral good in their
lives. We are learning that it is possible to educate children by means
of stories.

Story telling to be a developing factor in a child’s life must be
studied by the story teller. There are good stories and there are poor
stories for children. The story that fits a child’s needs to-day may
not prove a wise choice for him to-morrow. Some stories teach, some
stories only give joy, some stories inspire, some stories just make a
child laugh. Each of these story phases is important. To discover these
special types of stories, to fit stories to the individual child or
child group, and to make over stories for perfect telling has been my
aim in writing this book.

Through telling stories to many thousands of children and lecturing to
students I have found that story telling is a matter of psychology. The
pages that follow give my new theory of story telling to the teacher or
parent.

                                                 CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

    I. THE APPERCEPTIVE BASIS OF STORY TELLING                         1

   II. THE STORY WITH A SENSE APPEAL                                  23

  III. WHEN THE CURTAIN RISES                                         41

   IV. USING SUSPENSE TO DEVELOP CONCENTRATION                        57

    V. STORY CLIMAX                                                   83

   VI. TRAINING A CHILD’S MEMORY BY MEANS OF A STORY                 105

  VII. THE INSTINCT STORY                                            122

 VIII. THE DRAMATIC STORY                                            142

   IX. STORY TELLING AN AID TO VERBAL EXPRESSION                     171

    X. STIMULATING THE EMOTIONS BY MEANS OF A STORY                  191

   XI. IMAGINATION AND THE FAIRY STORY                               212

  XII. MAKING OVER STORIES                                           231

 XIII. PLANNING STORY GROUPS                                         245


STORIES FOR TELLING

  THE CAP THAT MOTHER MADE, adapted from Swedish Fairy Tales           8

  GOODY TWO SHOES                                                     16

  THE THREE CAKES, from Monsieur Berquin’s L’Ami des Enfants          35

  THE PRINCE’S VISIT, Horace E. Scudder                               52

  THE TRAVELS OF A FOX, Clifton Johnson                               60

  LITTLE LORNA DOONE, adapted from Richard Blackmore                  68

  LITTLE IN-A-MINUTE                                                  76

  OLD MAN RABBIT’S THANKSGIVING DINNER                                92

  THE GREAT STONE FACE, adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne              98

  LITTLE TUK, Hans Christian Andersen                                115

  THE SELFISH GIANT, Oscar Wilde                                     133

  THE GINGERBREAD BOY (dramatized), Carolyn Sherwin Bailey           153

  THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE (dramatized),
    Carolyn Sherwin Bailey                                           163

  THE WOODPECKER WHO WAS SELFISH, adapted from an Indian Folk Tale   181

  THE LITTLE RABBIT WHO WANTED RED WINGS, adapted from a
    Southern Folk Tale                                               185

  THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE, adapted from Miss Mulock                   201

  THE BLUE ROBIN, Mary Wilkins Freeman                               219

  THE GIRL WHO TROD ON THE LOAF, Hans Christian Andersen             238




FOR THE STORY TELLER




CHAPTER I

THE APPERCEPTIVE BASIS OF STORY TELLING


Apperception is a formidable and sometimes confusing term for a very
simple and easy-to-understand mental process. I once told Seumus
MacManus’ deliciously humorous story of Billy Beg and his Bull to
a group of foreign boys and girls in one of New York’s East Side
Settlement Houses. The children listened with apparent appreciation,
but, halfway along in the story, it occurred to me to ask them if they
had ever seen a bull. No one answered me at first. Then Pietro, a
little dusky-eyed son of Italy, raised a grimy hand.

“I seen one last summer when we was on a _fresh-air_,” he said. “It’s a
bigger cow, a bull is, with the bicycle handle-bars on her head.”

Pietro’s description of a bull was an example of apperception, the
method by means of which a new idea is interpreted, classified, “let
into” the human mind. He knew the class, _cows_. He also knew the
class, _bicycles_. He did not know the class, _bulls_--at least vividly
enough to be able to put the idea into terms of a verbal explanation
and description. So he did the most natural thing in the world, the
only possible mental process in fact by means of which children or
adults classify the _new_. He interpreted it in terms of the old,
explaining the unfamiliar idea, bull, by means of the familiar ideas,
cow and a bicycle.

This, then, is apperception. _It is the involuntary mental process
by means of which the human mind makes its own the strange, the
new, the unfamiliar idea by a method of fitting it into the class
of familiar ideas already known._ Apperception is a means of quick
mental interpretation. It is the welcoming of strangers to the
mind-habitation, strangers who come every day in the guise of
unfamiliar names, terms, scenes, and phrases, and determining in which
corner of the brain house they will fit most comfortably. The most
natural process is finally to give these new ideas an old mind corner
to rest in, or an old brain path in which to travel.

A child’s mind at the age when he is able to concentrate upon listening
to a story, three or four years of age--kindergarten age--is not a very
crowded house. It is a mind-house tenanted by a few and very simple
concepts which he has made his own through his previous home, mother
and play experiences. He is familiar with his nursery, his pets, his
family, his toys, his food, his bed. If he is a country child he knows
certain flowers, birds and farm animals, not as classes--flower, bird
and animal--but as _buttercup_, _robin_ and _sheep_. If he is a city
child his mind has a very different tenantry, and he thinks in terms of
_street_, _subway_, _park_, _fire engine_, _ambulance_. These to the
city child are also individual ideas, not classes. He knows them as
compelling, noisy, moving ideas which he has seen and experienced, but
they do not at all appeal to him as classes.

The story of “The Three Bears” is an obviously interesting one to
children upon entering school. It has its basis of interest in its
apperceptive quality, and it illustrates better than almost any other
story for children those qualities which bring about quick mental
interpretation on the part of the listener. The unusual, strange,
hazardous characters in the story, the three bears, are introduced to
the child in old, comfortably familiar terms which catch his interest
from the first sentence of the story. It is extremely doubtful if the
story of three bears set in a polar or forest environment would ever
have been popular so long or made so many children happy as has the
story of the historical three bears who lived in a house, ate porridge
from bowls, sat in chairs and slept in beds. Nor are these the only
apperceptive links between the life of the bears and that of the child.
There is a tiny bear in the story, the size, one may presuppose, of the
child who is listening to the story. The to-be-classified idea, _bear_,
is presented to children in this old folk tale in terms of already
known ideas, _house_, _porridge_, _chair_, _bed_ and _tiny_. Very
few story tellers have appreciated the underlying psychologic appeal
of the story of “The Three Bears,” but it illustrates a quality in
stories that we must look for if we wish to make the story we select a
permanency in the child’s mental life.

_The apperceptive basis of story telling consists in study on the part
of the story teller to discover what is the store of ideas in the minds
of the children who will listen to the story._

Has the story too many new ideas for the child to be able to classify
them in terms of his old ideas? On the other hand, has it one or two
new thoughts so carefully presented through association with already
familiar concepts that the child will be able to make them his own and
give them a permanent place in his mind with the old ones?

A child’s mind is an eery place for an adult to try and enter.
Teachers, kindergartners and story tellers are a little prone to
think that a knowledge of one child’s mental content gives them the
power to know the mind of the child-at-large. Our psychologists have
given us studies of child mind, not child minds. This mind hypothesis
is, perhaps, sufficient for the general working out of systems of
teaching, but success in the delicate art of story telling means a
most critical study and observation of the minds of the special group
of children who will hear the story. The story teller must ask herself
these questions:

“What do these children _know_?”

“Have they any experience other than that of the home on which to bank?”

“Do they come from homes of leisure or homes of industry?”

“Have they had a country or a city experience?”

“Have they passed from the stage of development when toys formed their
play interest to the game stage in which chance and hazard interest
them more deeply?”

“Are they American children, familiar with American institutions, or
are they little aliens in our land, unfamiliar with and confused by our
ways?”

When she has satisfactorily answered these questions, the story teller
will select her story having for its theme, atmosphere and _motif_ an
idea or group of ideas that will touch the child’s mental life as she
has discovered it and by means of which it will find a permanent place
in his mind through its comfortable friendliness and familiarity.

The child who has come directly from his home and the sheltering arms
of his mother or nurse should not, at first, be taken far afield
through the lands of fairies and giants. If he is told a fairy story,
it should have for its content the sweet, homely qualities that
characterize the home. I am using as a good example of the apperceptive
story, “The Cap that Mother Made.” The child listeners are carried,
it is true, to the palace of a King and are formally introduced to a
Princess, but this is brought about through the familiar symbols of the
home: _mother_, _brothers_, the _farmer_, and the queer little _cap_
with its red and green stripes and blue tassel. Although Anders, the
story hero, spends a happy hour at the Princess’ ball, he finally finds
his way home again, and the story has an apperceptive appeal which
is unusual. It is full of precious, familiar concepts that establish
an association in the child’s mind between fairyland and home. After
hearing the story, he will be very apt always to remember a palace as
a very charming place to visit, but not to stay in, when one may go
home to mother.


THE CAP THAT MOTHER MADE

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Anders, who had a new
cap. And a prettier cap you never have seen, for mother herself had
knit it; and nobody could make anything quite so nice as mother did. It
was altogether red, except a small part in the middle which was green,
for the red yarn had given out; and the tassel was blue.

His brothers and sisters walked about squinting at him, and their faces
grew long with envy. But Anders cared nothing about that. He put his
hands in his pockets and went out for a walk, for he wished everybody
to see how fine he looked in his new cap.

The first person he met was a farmer walking along by the side of a
wagon load of wood. He made a bow so deep that his back came near
breaking. He was dumbfounded, I can tell you, when he saw it was nobody
but Anders.

“Dear me,” said he, “if I did not think it was the gracious little
count himself!” And then he invited Anders to ride in his wagon.

But when one has a pretty, red cap with a blue tassel, one is too fine
to ride in a wagon, and Anders walked proudly by.

At the turn of the road he met the tanner’s son, Lars. He was such a
big boy that he wore high boots, and carried a jack-knife. He gaped and
gazed at the cap, and could not keep from fingering the blue tassel.

“Let’s trade caps,” he said. “I will give you my jack-knife to boot.”

Now this knife was a very good one, though half the blade was gone and
the handle was a little cracked; and Anders knew that one is almost a
man as soon as one has a jack-knife. But still it did not come up to
the new cap which mother had made.

“Oh, no, I’m not so stupid as all that; no, I’m not!” Anders said.

And then he said good-by to Lars with a nod; but Lars only made faces
at him, for he had not been to school much, poor boy; and, besides, he
was very much put out because he could not cheat Anders out of his cap
which mother had made.

Anders went along, and he met a very old, old woman who courtesied till
her skirts looked like a balloon. She called him a little gentleman,
and said that he was fine enough to go to the royal court ball.

“Yes, why not?” thought Anders. “Seeing that I am so fine, I may as
well go and visit the King.”

And so he did. In the palace yard stood two soldiers with shining
helmets, and with muskets over their shoulders; and when Anders came to
the gate, both the muskets were leveled at him.

“Where may you be going?” asked one of the soldiers.

“I am going to the court ball,” answered Anders.

“No, you are not,” said the other soldier, stepping forward. “Nobody is
allowed there without a uniform.”

But just at this instant the princess came tripping across the yard.
She was dressed in white silk with bows of gold ribbon. When she saw
Anders and the soldiers, she walked over to them.

“Oh,” she said, “he has such a very fine cap on his head, and that will
do just as well as a uniform.”

And she took Anders’ hand and walked with him up the broad marble
stairs where soldiers were posted at every third step, and through
the beautiful halls where courtiers in silk and velvet stood bowing
wherever he went. For no doubt they thought him a prince when they saw
his fine cap.

At the farther end of the largest hall a table was set with golden cups
and golden plates in long rows. On huge silver dishes were piles of
tarts and cakes, and red wine sparkled in shining glasses.

The princess sat down at the head of this long table; and she let
Anders sit in a golden chair by her side.

“But you must not eat with your cap on your head,” she said, putting
out her hand to take it off.

“Oh, yes, I can eat just as well,” said Anders, holding on to his
cap; for if they should take it away from him nobody would any longer
believe that he was a prince; and, besides, he did not feel sure that
he would get it back again.

“Well, well, give it to me,” said the princess, “and I will give you a
kiss.”

The princess was certainly beautiful, and Anders would have dearly
liked to be kissed by her, but the cap which mother had made he would
not give up on any condition. He only shook his head.

“Well, but see,” said the princess; and she filled his pockets with
cakes, and put her own gold chain around his neck, and bent down and
kissed him.

But he only moved farther back in his chair and did not take his hands
away from his head.

Then the doors were thrown open, and the King entered with a large
number of gentlemen in glittering uniforms and plumed hats. The King
himself wore a purple mantle which trailed behind him, and he had a
large gold crown on his white curly hair.

He smiled when he saw Anders in the gilt chair.

“That is a very fine cap you have,” he said.

“So it is,” replied Anders. “Mother knit it of her very best yarn, and
everybody wishes to get it away from me.”

“But surely you would like to change caps with me,” said the King,
raising his large, heavy crown from his head.

Anders did not answer. He sat as before, and held on to his red cap
which everybody was so eager to get. But when the King came nearer to
him, with his gold crown between his hands, then Anders grew frightened
as never before. If he did not take good care, the King might cheat him
out of his cap; for