Pratt's Kids' Page:  Storytelling Tips for Parents and Teachers

Reviewed By: Kimberly Picozzi

Pratt's Kids' Page: Storytelling Tips for Parents and Teachers http://www.pratt.lib.md.us/kids/storytellingtips.html

The "Storytelling Tips for Parents and Teachers" web page is part of the Enoch Pratt Free Library website. A perusal of this Baltimore, Maryland library website confirms the library's mission to help teachers and parents share quality literature with children. The page provides 22 different tips to help tellers or readers incorporate audience participation into the presentation of a story. The suggestions include what the site describes as " 'Traditional' and Nontraditional Telling (Puppets, Props, Crafts, Creative Dramatics etc.)" (2001). With selections like The Cake That Mack Ate by Rose Robart, the stories are predominantly geared toward the 4-8 year old child. Several titles like Jan Brett's The Mitten are for pre-school children. The books mentioned offer good suggestions for the storyteller who wishes to retell traditional tales like Jan Brett does with the Ukrainian folktale. Most of the stories can be adapted to fit the storyteller's audience.

One of the most innovative suggestions was the use of creative dynamics for The Twelve Days of Summer by Elizabeth Lee O'Donnell. The children become sea anemones when they "entwine fingers and wiggle [their fingers]" to act out one of the many sea creatures described in the song. For young audiences who might otherwise become fidgety during a storytelling session this provides an opportunity to interact and a more concrete reinforcement of the creatures being described.

Another novel idea extends the storytelling time into an activity or instructional objective. For example after reading the Chicken Book by Garth Williams, children participate in a hunt to find things that chickens eat.

This site provides an excellent resource for the parent, teacher, or storyteller to glean ideas for creating opportunities for audience participation. All the stories listed have clear author citations, but no citations are made for the activities described. Most of the titles mentioned were readily found with a search of online bookstores or library catalogs. The most recent revision of the Kids' Page seems to have been October 2001 and an e-mail address is included within the website.