Comments on: In the storytelling engine room…

By: Becky

Becky — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:40:46 +0000

so great. maybe i’ll tell my kids stories about a raccoon named agamemnon. & “the raccoons: let’s dance” sounds completely formidable. wow.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:39:24 +0000

A lot of research has been done on child development and one thing they’ve discovered is the value of repetition. That’s why “Blue’s Clues” shows the same episode five days in a row. (Read Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” for more information). But what I remember, and what I believe has an immense value, is repeating the story ‘wrong’. My parents used to read “Jack and the Beanstalk” to me all the time as a child. But every time they read it, something was wrong. The cow was traded in for magic… socks or something.
“Hey!” I would say, “That’s not right! It’s magic BEANS!”.
I think this is a great way for children to learn. Picking out errors, thinking critically, and other skills are enforced early on.

By: Sue

Sue — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:07:43 +0000

My dad actually used to sing me and my sister to sleep, we still can sing all of those songs.

As for stories, he’d read from the book The Wonder Clock, which was a book of old fairy tales that I loved. But he had two main stories that he made up that were the same but a little different each time – How Percy Penguin got his name, and How Cookie Monster learned to make cookies. My mom would sometimes chime in with crazy adventures on a yellow submarine (I think we all know now what that was influenced from…)
Much like the above reader with ralph the bunny, 25 or so years later Percy the Penguin is a running joke in my family, and we have many stuffed penguins. :)

By: Allison

Allison — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:16:35 +0000

My mother was very manipulative with her storytelling. For example, she loved to tell tales while playing “Let’s Pretend” And it would always involve me being an exiled princess forced into hard labour by an eveil witch. Then she would pretend to be the witch, hand me a can of Bon Ami and tell me to get to work scrubbing the bathroom. Of course in the end, my “princess” character was set free from bondage. But it took me years to realise Mom just wanted me to clean the bathroom.

By: Sally

Sally — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:03:12 +0000

When I was really little my dad read Where the Wild things are so many times he had it memorized. He would always do actions and change his voice. Then, when my twin brother and I were older, he read Greek mythology to us. Those were always good stories.

By: mri

mri — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:44:43 +0000

my grandmother used to write stories for us and send them to my parents to read to us. she ALWAYS had talking animals or elves and fairies or other fun stuff in them. the main thing i remember from them is an owl that would hoot “who, who, who cooks for you?” every time i hear an owl, i think of that.

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:38:04 +0000

i babysat this crazy girl for like, 3 weeks last spring. we would go play in the park and the only way i could get her still was by telling her stories (her command) which involved her (her command). they had to be scary stories (i used huge pumpkins, skeletons, etc.) where the scary characters tried to get her, and then i’d yell or grab her shoulders or something like the skeleton got her. she was crazy.

By: E

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:25:06 +0000

My Dad told me episodic stories about “Ralph The Bunny.” He was a young boy bunny, whose adventures always had titles rather similar to whatever I was doing or going through at the time: “Ralph The Bunny’s Halloween Costume” “Ralph The Bunny Goes to Grandma’s House” “Ralph The Bunny Meets the Tooth Fairy.”

A year ago, at Easter, I gave Dad a stuffed rabbit- Ralph, “live” 20 years later. And since then, he and I have been pranking each other with the bunny, passing the bunny back and forth, mailing it to friends, bribing waiters and bartenders in restaurants to bring it to the table, etc. He got me good with it on my birthday, and I’ve got to come up with something really good to pass it back. Hmmm.

By: Melissa B

Melissa B — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:18:28 +0000

My daddy, almost every night, used to make up storys to tell me at bed time. They were of Princess Melissa and Snowball her magical cat that could morph into anything. I loved theses tales as a kid. I looked forward to the adventers in the land of castles. They somtimes had some lesson to be learned, this happend if I had been naughty that day. The storys always ended happly. I now find myself telling a revamped version to my nieces Princess Madison and Princess Chloe.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:01:36 +0000

How interesting, I first assumed you were talking about the animated Disney series called “The Raccoons.” It had a very different feel to it than most cartoons, which is why Watership Down-meets-Dynasty seemed like such an apt description of the show.

From retrojunk.com:

Cartoon about the misadventures of Bert Raccoon and his friends who together try to stop the greedy Aardvark Cyril Sneer from destroying the Evergreen Forest. The series was a spin-off from the popular tv specials The Christmas Raccoons (80), The Raccoons On Ice (81), The Raccoons and the Lost Star (83) and The Raccoons: Let’s Dance (84).