Justice: Fairy Tale Style

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Over the course of my storytelling life, I have marveled at how kids react to villains.

Depending on what that character is doing, kids turn on a dime. They will love that character right up until the moment he betrays them, and then that character is dead to them.

They don't care what happens to the villain as long as he/she gets their comeuppance and they are happy to punish the character in whatever horrible way the story decides.

Rumpelstiltskin is a great example of this.

actor Robert Carlyle as Rumpel in Once Upon A Time

He shows up at Anna's great need, and spins the straw to gold. The first two times he takes baubles from her. The kids find the little elf man funny. Whenever he is about to appear I make a specific sound and hand movement.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! (My hands open and close as I move them in a circle. This happens every time the little man is set to appear. By his third appearance, they have this down to a science and they take over doing it in the story. I become the audience for them.)

He has a funny voice and gestures, and moves in a quirky manner. He sings a little song as he spins, and they start doing it with me by the the second time through. They adore him.

Then he crosses that line from savior to sinner. He asks for her baby in return for his services. 

The children gasp in disbelief and shock. They can't imagine he's serious. They beg Anna not to agree. She speaks to herself, but really to the sea of shocked children,

"What if the king is lying? Maybe he won't marry me. Even if he does marry me, maybe I won't have a child. Some people don't have children. The future could be anything, but right now? Right now I'm in trouble."

So, she agrees to give up her child. The children are upset. They still spin gold with the little man, but the tide has turned. They are no longer looking forward to seeing him.

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The next series of events unfolds until the queen has a baby. Usually one or two children whisper, "Oh no." under their breath. 

I continue, "Then, one morning, she heard a sound she hadn't heard in almost two years. What sound was that?"

The children make the sound, but they are not enthusiastic about it.

When he shows up to collect the baby, they are now pulling for Anna to get the right name. Some kids, the ones who know the story, can barely hold themselves together. Most of them don't remember the name. Those who do are trying to reassure their classmates sitting around them that it is going to be all right.

The first two days she does not guess correctly. 

Then, the maid arrives with the little song that breaks the whole story open.

"My lady, I saw a strange little man. He was dancing around a fire and singing this little song."

Today, I brew

Tomorrow I bake

On the third day

The queen's baby I'll take!

The queen must guess

This game she can't win

For my name is RUMPELSTILTSKIN!

At the end of this little song, the audience lets out a collective breath and the kids get really excited.

The queen says, "Thank you." 

I give the audience a knowing look and say, "A few hours later, you know what she heard."

Now, up to this point in the story, whenever the children made the dinging sound and the hand movements, they mirror the way I did it with exactly the same gestures. Some of them actually stop making the sound after he asks for the baby. They want no part of bringing the little horror back into the story.

 This last time, however, when they know Rumpelstiltskin is about to get his comeuppance, they all lose their collective minds.

The exuberance with which they start making that sound, and the forcefulness of their hand motions is amazing. It always startles the educators and adults in the room. At least, it startles the ones who aren't participating. The grown ups who are participating are just as excited as the kids.

That horrible little man who they loved so well at the beginning of the story is about to get his little green clad butt kicked, and they cannot wait to see it.

Personally, I always felt sorry for Rumpel. I mean, he was helping Anna out. True, he did get greedy at the end, but if her father hadn't told that horrendous lie to begin with, she wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.

I always thought he got a bum rap.

The kids in my audiences don't have this problem. 

I wonder if I would have had their experience if I'd had a storyteller tell me the tale as opposed to hearing it on a record. I wonder if I would have felt the same if I'd had that little man in my body and voice as he betrayed the helpless girl who was at the mercy of an exaggerating father and greedy soon to be husband.

I'll never know. My audiences, however, are not the least bit confused about why he should get punished.

The last half of this year I was telling social justice tales in schools. These are stories about people with power taking advantage of people who had no sure way to face them.

The children had no trouble identifying when the person in power was doing something wrong. In fact, they would yell at him/her. 

When one character decided he didn't want poor or ugly people around him, I heard about it vociferously from my audience. When one character stole from another, I heard about it. The kids had no patience for injustice. They were quick to call it out and let me know it was no bueno!

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My favorite moment was when the West Wind stole cornmeal from Willa and offered her a ratty old tablecloth as a a fair trade when he could not return it.

I said, "Willa looked up at the North Wind, then she looked at that ratty tablecloth and said..."

Before I could get the next line out of my mouth, a third grader sitting a couple of rows back shook his head and said, "Bro!"

The kids around him nodded. That was the only possible reply one could give to somebody taking something valuable and then offering you a big rag as compensation.

I replied, "Pretty much," and went on with the tale.

I was quite proud of our children all across the country. 

I hope, as they get older, they keep their ability to recognize injustice, cruelty, liars, hatred, and intolerance. I hope they call it out when they encounter it. I hope they feel the same outrage in the world around them if they witness the abuse of power, and I hope they choose to stand against it in times to come.

Happy Telling - 

When Administrators Attack: The Audience Grouping That Gives You Headaches

This week was typical of winter work.  Weather threatened, but we kept our spirits high.  Then, the day before my first show, we got the word:  ICE.

If you do not live in the south, you have no idea how this word can throw terror into the heart of every administrator.  Now, it isn’t that we don’t know what ice is.  We do live in the south, after all.  Ice is that stuff that floats in your sweet tea to make summer bearable.

Before I’d even picked up my daughter from school for the day, the powers that be cancelled all after school activities.

I called the contact for the school I’d been planning to visit the next morning, and suggested we move the show to Friday since I had a different school on Thursday. She agreed.

By four o’clock Tuesday afternoon, they’d put the schools on a two hour delay for the following morning.

By eight o’clock that night, before even a hint of ice had begun to fall from the sky, they cancelled schools altogether.

Wednesday afternoon, my contact for the school that was booked for Thursday morning called.  We expected a two-hour delay, so we rescheduled for the afternoon.  That’s when things got really interesting.

Because of the change in schedule, the administrators decided to regroup the sets:  Kindergarteners in with the third and fourth graders for one set, and first and second graders with the fifth grade.  I later discovered this was because there was some group visiting the school who wanted to observe the kindergarten.

There are moments when I encounter something so strange I just laugh out loud.  My contact was aware that it was not the best combinations, but she had no control of the choices.

 This sort of grouping always leaves me sighing.

When I tell K – 2 sets, I don’t tell to the first grade.  I tell to the kindergartners and the second graders.  The second graders still enjoy the Kinder stories, and the second grade stories stretch the entire audience.

When I tell to 3 – 5, I tell to the Fifth graders since they are the tricky bunch in the room, and if you lose them, you have a problem.

So, the most difficult group to address for me are the Kindergartners, third and fourth graders.  Who do you tell to in that group? 

The stories I generally tell to the fourth grade are very long, involved, have plot twists, and are geared very specifically to them.  These stories will occupy the third grade as they work out what is happening, but they would be the kiss of death to the kindergartners.  The kinder stories are silly, fast paced, full of animals, bizarre sound effects, and they are about learning story structure in its most stripped down form.  How much extreme, plotless silliness can the fourth graders take before they become convinced that storytelling is for ‘babies’?

The first, second, and fifth grade was the easier of the two.  I told Janice Del Negro's Willa and the Wind, a story that works well with third and fourth grade.  I did a first and second grade piece called Too Much Noise, and ended it out with an original story composed by my children called the Prince and the SoccerBall.  The fifth graders lost all pretense of fifth graderness, since the only people in there to see them acting that silly were the first and second graders, and who cares what they think?

Here is a version of Too Much Noise.  Not the one I tell, but it is a good one.

The Kindergarten, third and fourth set was less successful.  Three wishes is a safe enough story, but the Kinders lose track of it, and they don’t quite remember what the point of the whole thing was, but they like the funny voices and sounds.  This means they laugh inappropriately, or they try to talk to me during the set.  Because they don’t have anyone else their size to take social cues from except each other, they learn how they are supposed to behave slowly.  When the first graders are in the house, Kinders tend to mimic their behavior.  On their own, Kinders can get difficult if you are not telling directly to them.

  One Man, One Fish, a story from China, is a much quieter story, which I tell because the Kinders are less likely to ‘fake’ laugh.  The kinders began to wiggle in the middle of the tale, and they were close to riot by the end.  We took a stretch break, and I changed up the program.

I told two stories for the kinders.  The Squeaky Door, and Johnny and Suzy thumb.  Most of the fourth graders participated without the fear they were doing something babyish, but there were a few, and there always are, who kept looking around with discomfort, and stared at me unmoving for the last two tales.  The third graders were willing to play, and the kinders loved those tales.



A reading of Margaret Read McDonald's version of The Squeaky Door.  Again, not the version I tell, but a good one to share.

Here is a link to Johnny and Suzy Thumb

http://www.cmlibrary.org/bookhive/zingertales/default.asp?storyid=15

Putting sets together for a diverse school audience can be challenging.  There are stories for everyone…but in a set like this, sometimes you have to wait until the teller gets around to your tale.

Happy Telling!

The Last Two Guests! Ah, Summertime!

This summer has been amazing.  The running about.  The nine thousand miles I put on my car.  The insane amount of time I logged on planes.

I have had the most amazing guest bloggers in this space all summer.  I learn so much by listening to and reading about other artists.  If you want to find out who was here and what they had to say, go to the Guest Artist button on the menu at the top of the blog.

Now, on to current matters.  I was at the National Storytelling Network Conference last week.  Fabulous.  I may or may not write about it since so many other people have.  I'll link over to stuff when I'm not feeling quite as lazy as I am today.

Yes, today, I am lazy.  Why?  Well, because my summer is officially done!

I have two weeks to just come down off the travel high and spend some time with my family.

I do have some goodies in waiting, though.

My last two guests in the summer series are yet to come and they are wonderful.

On August 7th, you will encounter a woman I respect the heck out of who is also a wonderful author and teaching artist who is forever trying new things.  She's done improv work, we've seen her in costume at the Renaissance Fair, and she's just gotten into throwing pots.   Some of her books include The O'Dwyer and Grady series.

I actually have a credit for helping her solve one of the mysteries in this series!

She writes for audiences both old and young

Did I mention she was an investigative journalist?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Eileen Heyes!

Eileen Heyes

"I look at the world and the people in it, and I see stories everywhere just waiting to be written. That’s the outlook I bring with me when I visit schools and lead workshops – so I can help students open their eyes to the fun they can have when they sit down to write."

Eileen will share some thoughts about creating biographies for your fictional characters to give them more depth.  Well worth the read.



On August 14th, my absolute last guest of the summer is a woman who became one of my college 'mothers', gave me my very first professional job right out of school, let me crash on her couch, gave me love life advice, has written some fabulous books, is a phenomenal storyteller, is a Dr., a professor, writes reviews of children's books, is a librarian par excellence, and has had my back so many times it isn't even funny.

She's got books on telling stories

I love this book.  In fact, I tell this book!  (With permission of course!)

I tell this one as well!

I am speaking now of my dear friend and force of nature, Janice Del Negro.

Janice Del Negro

The final post in my summer season is from the first person who put her money on the line and sent me out to meet the public.

Her piece is about the power of using folk and fairy tales with adolescents in the classroom, and it is, like everything she does, exquisite.


So, these will be the last two and then I will go back to irregularly scheduled programming in this space.

Happy Summertime!