How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell | Page 6

little button buttoned, my
baby niece climbed hastily down from her chair, and deliberately up
into my lap. With a caress rare to her habit she spoke my name, slowly
and tentatively, "An-ty Sai-ry?" Then, in an assured tone, "Anty Sairy,
I love you so much I don't know what to do!" And, presently, tucking a
confiding hand in mine to lead me to breakfast, she explained sweetly,
"I didn' know you when you comed las' night, but now I know you all
th' time!"
"Oh, blessed tale," thought I, "so easy a passport to a confidence so
desired, so complete!" Never had the witchery of the story to the ear of
a child come more closely home to me. But the fact of the witchery was
no new experience. The surrender of the natural child to the story-teller
is as absolute and invariable as that of a devotee to the priest of his own
sect.
This power is especially valuable in the case of children whose natural
shyness has been augmented by rough environment or by the
strangeness of foreign habit. And with such children even more than
with others it is also true that the story is a simple and effective means
of forming the habit of concentration, of fixed attention; any teacher

who deals with this class of children knows the difficulty of doing this
fundamental and indispensable thing, and the value of any practical aid
in doing it.
More than one instance of the power of story- telling to develop
attentiveness comes to my mind, but the most prominent in memory is
a rather recent incident, in which the actors were boys and girls far past
the child-stage of docility.
I had been asked to tell stories to about sixty boys and girls of a club;
the president warned me in her invitation that the children were
exceptionally undisciplined, but my previous experiences with similar
gatherings led me to interpret her words with a moderation which left
me totally unready for the reality. When I faced my audience, I saw a
squirming jumble of faces, backs of heads, and the various members of
many small bodies,--not a person in the room was paying the slightest
attention to me; the president's introduction could scarcely be said to
succeed in interrupting the interchange of social amenities which was
in progress, and which looked delusively like a free fight. I came as
near stage fright in the first minutes of that occasion as it is comfortable
to be, and if it had not been impossible to run away I think I should not
have remained. But I began, with as funny a tale as I knew, following
the safe plan of not speaking very loudly, and aiming my effort at the
nearest children. As I went on, a very few faces held intelligently to
mine; the majority answered only fitfully; and not a few of my hearers
conversed with their neighbours as if I were non- existent. The sense of
bafflement, the futile effort, forced the perspiration to my hands and
face--yet something in the faces before me told me that it was no
ill-will that fought against me; it was the apathy of minds without the
power or habit of concentration, unable to follow a sequence of ideas
any distance, and rendered more restless by bodies which were
probably uncomfortable, certainly undisciplined.
The first story took ten minutes. When I began a second, a very short
one, the initial work had to be done all over again, for the slight
comparative quiet I had won had been totally lost in the resulting
manifestation of approval.

At the end of the second story, the room was really orderly to the
superficial view, but where I stood I could see the small boy who
deliberately made a hideous face at me each time my eyes met his, the
two girls who talked with their backs turned, the squirms of a figure
here and there. It seemed so disheartening a record of failure that I
hesitated much to yield to the uproarious request for a third story, but
finally I did begin again, on a very long story which for its own sake I
wanted them to hear.
This time the little audience settled to attention almost at the opening
words. After about five minutes I was suddenly conscious of a sense of
ease and relief, a familiar restful feeling in the atmosphere; and then, at
last, I knew that my audience was "with me," that they and I were
interacting without obstruction. Absolutely quiet, entirely unconscious
of themselves, the boys and girls were responding to every turn of the
narrative as easily and readily as any group of story-bred kindergarten
children. From then on we had a good time together.
The process