Storytelling Listeners

Reviewed by Martha Johnson

This page is an excerpt from Aaron Shepard's website that gives some storytelling hints about space, audience, and interaction with audience. Aaron Shepard is an award winning author and his specialty is retelling folktales and other traditional and classic literature from around the world. His stories are intended for a wide range of elementary grades. Adults also enjoy his stories, and they are very good for reading aloud. The storytelling tips are written by Mr. Shepard and are derived from his experiences as a storyteller.

The site has been online since October, 1996, and was updated as recently as September, 2003. The site is built, maintained, and supported by Mr. Shepard.

The links at the bottom of this site take the viewer to the home page of Mr. Shepard. Here there are many excellent links for storytellers. There is the actual text for many folktales, fairy tales, original tales told by Mr. Shepard. Aaron's RT page takes the viewer to descriptions of his books which have scripts for stories and folktales for reader's theatre. The most exciting link on the page is Aaron's Storytelling Page. This page includes a section called Gifts of Story that has text of many of his stories that can be used as long the teller gives Mr. Shepard credit. There is also a section called Tell a Story that has many great storytelling hints for the beginning storyteller. Also included on this page are links to articles of interest to storytellers, storytelling quotes, and storytelling books. Aaron's Kidwriting page has many helpful books and many helpful hints for the aspiring children's book writer. Aaron's Bookshelf page includes many resources he has used when doing research for his many multicultural stories. One great section of the page is the link to Aaron's books. Click on Aaron's extras, and there are excerpts from some of his books, recordings of him reading his books, and beautiful flyers to print out.

The site is there to promote Mr. Shepard. There are links to contacting him for visits and for his books, but the site is so informative and helpful to storytellers and to aspiring writers. The site is also very to teachers who would like to use his stories for the classroom.

The site is not exciting to look at, but it is very easy to navigate, and the pages load very quickly and with no trouble.