Catchy Lockyer Stories - Bush to Beach: Creating Wildlife Adventures: Making your place an...

Catchy Lockyer Stories - Bush to Beach: Creating Wildlife Adventures: Making your place an...: "Had a great day at the Fordsdale Hall today with all of the children, artists, carers and Land for Wildlife experts and participants. Ford..."

Mother Goose's Fairy Tales Retold In Easy Words Chiefly Of One Syllable

Took a break on Saturday and went down to the West End Markets to see who we could see. Caught Jeremy Youse busking with his usual flair and energy. He's added a top hat symble to his line up. Sounded good.

Met a few other friends, had a curry puff and a cup of coffee and couldn't resist an old copy of 'Mother Goose's Fairy Tales : Retold in Easy Words Chiefly Of One Syllable'. It's undated but probably from around 1950 or so. Had a mix of stories some of which I had not come across before but, really, it was the illustrations, especially the colour plates by G. E. Breary that sold me and anyway it was only $3.

The stories and characters are so English. All the children are rosy cheeked, the girls have bows in their hair and the boys quite Elizabethan in doublets and hose. Of course boys and princes rescue girls and princesses. Good manners triumph over just about everything else and, yes, most of the words are one or two syllables.

Here's an excerpt from 'The Giant Hands'
'Willy lay down that night with a heart full of thanks that he had met so good a master, and thought f his home to which he hoped soon to go back to make his fond mother smile once again.

'He was nearly asleep, and his thoughts were in part mixed with dreams, when a loud shout of "Fire! Fire! roused him.

'Up he rose and dressed quikcly, while the cries grew louder and louder. He ran down stairs. the smoke nearly choked him, for thehouse was on fire. He rushed into the farm-yard where he say his master, with the maids, in a great fright; no water at hand, no fire-engine, every one shouting, the pigs squealing, and the geese cackling.

' What was to be done? The staircase was burned, the flames ran from room to room, and there at a bedroom window stood (can you guess) the farmer's daughter with the smoke all about her; very soon it would be too late!

'As Willie looked on and thought what he could do to save the poor girl's life the giant hands were seen to place themselvers by the side of the house in the form of a ladder, and up this Willie sprang quickly. Soon he reached the window and seized the girl in his arms; he then rushed down and placed her, safe and sound, in charge of her father.'

Aaaaaah! Goodness prevails. Order is restored and the GIANT HANDS are revealed to be the HANDS OF INDUSTRY - known to many and always ready to help the willing and the good.

We didn't get an illustration of Willie braving the fire but we do have

'The Farmer's Daughter Gave Him a Kind Glance'

In some ways its all of another age. Or is it. Princes are still rescuing people although, these days, its from a helicopter. I must have been exposed to similar books as a child but I suspect even then I was cringing while knowing that I had some sort of cultural access.

Life Stories in West End

Enjoyed a cup of chai and an interview with Ian Kath, local West End podcaster this morning. I'm looking forward to seeing the post on his podcast yourstorypodcast.com and another on CreateYourLifeStory.com . Mind you the conversation before and after about storytelling and stories and audio software and iLife etc, etc was just as interesting. 

One of the things we talked about was human consciousness and how it was related to language and story. 

How do we learn about story structure? Is it scanned by the baby brain like language sounds? What stories we choose to tell and what we include in them, feel safe to include in them, I find fascinating. I'll be interested to listen to some of my own stories after the editor has his way. 

Oral History and Life Stories make such important contributions to cultures it's well worth encouraging the practice.

Value of Fairytales

Have been spending time doing some culling of old files in my office and library and came across a couple of quotes from Rudolph Meyer 'The Wisdom of Fairy Tales' that I obviously thought were worth writing out on the second page of a notebook.

The notebook was saved from the recycling bin because of them so I thought I'd better post the quotes for what passes for blog posterity.

'The characters in fairytales lead us to discover the treasures in our own souls. We become instinctively aware of the sorrows of life and the guidance of destiny.'

Well, I don't think I believe in destiny but I must admit as I look at the news reports of the tsunami in Japan I do wonder about the forces of nature and the sometimes disastrous effects they have on life.

'Fairytales told and retold by mother to child (father to child, storyteller to audience) enrich those depths of soul from which our later hopes and ideals are born.'

I did two shows today with preprep children. One of the centres always requests the same three stories. 'The Tailor', '3 Billy Goats Gruff' and 'Caps for Sale'. Afterwards, the director said,'You know we'll be playing '3 Billy Goats Gruff' and 'Caps for Sale' for months after you visit. They take turns being the characters and the narrator.'

Will those depths of their souls be enriched? Who knows. They'll probably have lots of fun though.

October Storytelling

I've had a wonderfully varied but quite busy month of storytelling this month.

One of the highlights were the training workshops I was asked to run for PSCQ Workforce Council in Townsville, Ingham, Charters Towers and Ayr. Got to meet lots of early childhood workers from 'the Capital of North Queensland' and surrounding towns.

This week I've been telling in Logan City libraries as part of Children's Week. Had some very young audiences for a pleasant change. One of the highlights though was a mixed age special needs group that came to the library from a local state school. No one had told me that I was getting a special needs class and it took me a little while to work it out. The pleasure though was the unreserved, enthusiastic way in which they enjoyed the stories. This is when storytelling works best. When an audience suspends disbelief and provides lots of feedback about what they are enjoying then the storytelling can really create lots of fun and pleasure.

Another little pleasant surprise at one of the libraries was the young (around 3 yrs old) boy who turned up carrying two dolls. One was Woody from Toy Story and the other was ....... Barbie. He took great pleasure in showing me that if you pressed Barbie gemstone brooch it and her similarly gem encrusted high heels started flashing. Pretty cool I thought. I told him that my favourite Barbie was Monster Truck Driving Barbie.

Had coffee down at Black Star with Rosalyn, a recent migrant from Liberia and Sierra Leone, yesterday afternoon. She wants to tell traditional African stories to Prep audiences. I suggested that she gets a number of stories together that might work and myself and some Storytelling Guild people can give her some feedback. I'm looking forward to seeing how she goes.

Today is the last kindy day before Halloween and, not surprisingly, I was asked to tell some scary stories. I must admit I'm a bit negative about the commercialisation and Americanisation of All Hallows Eve. I'm also a bit concerned about just how scary, scary stories should be for 4 yr olds.

I ended up compromising. I told Jack and the Bean Stalk and I told 'The Old Woman in the Pumpkin' from India. There were two Indian children in the audience and the boy, of Tamil background, was really enjoying it.

I'm never sure how to end Jack and the Bean Stalk however. I know that the main reason children enjoy it is that the hero is a young person and that he overcomes a scary, old giant by being brave and fast and quick witted but really he does dispatch that old giant in a rather gruesome way. I do believe in means and ends and I'm not sure I want to be encouraging any young person to be stealing 'hens that lay golden eggs'.

I wonder if the giant can chase Jack until he comes across the strange old man who gave him the magic beans in the first place? Could be good to bring him back into the story.

Storytellers' Names

Had the pleasure of performing at two Sunshine Coast C&K prepreps today - Kawana Waters and Buderim.

I love the pre-prepers at this time of year. They're just as excited but they are so intelligent.

At Kawana I told 'Rosie and the Whale' (one of my stories), 'Captain Parrot' (an improv. on my basic Captain Hook story) and 'The Very Clever Turtle' (an adaption of a folk tale from Ghana). At Buderim I told - 'Mary Had a Little Lamb (one of my stories based on the nursery ryhme),'The Baby Tyrannosaurus Rex' and an audience directed improv called 'Barbie and the Frog Prince'.

One of the children asked where I got my stories from and, when I said, 'Books, Grandparents and other storytellers' wanted to know the names of some of my storyteller friends. I obliged of course an even mentioned some of my Facebook storyteller friends. I had expected that some of them might have heard of Facebook but none had.

Enchanted Forest Stories

One of the projects I really enjoyed was the Enchanted Forest Playground story creation project at Ashgrove Primary School. The stories we created were recorded and incorporated into the Brisbane City Council playground in Dorrington Park. You can go to the playground and listen to the stories.

I've continued to tell some of those stories and create new Enchanted Forest stories with a whole range of students around the state. They usually get a really excited response especially from preprep and prep students.

Here's feedback from a C&K kinder on the northside:

'Thanks heaps Daryll. The storytelling continued outside. We are going on a group excursion in the next few weeks to the Enchanted Forest, so we can improvise some more. See you next time ...'

I love when the storytelling and creation continues like this.

You can visit the park as well if you're in Brisbane.


View Enchanted Forest Playground in a larger map


Here's a link on playground finder.