“Every Story I Tell is true,...
...except for the parts that I make up!”
source My Uncle Pete loved cats. he had a million of them. His favorite one had one blue eye. The other eye, whatever color it might have been, had been missing as long as I’d been alive. “Uncle Pete,” we’d ask, “tell us how that cat lost his eye!” My...
Storytelling is work Being a working storyteller is a pretty intense job at times. Right now the booking season is in full swing and schools, libraries, conferences and other types of performance and workshop venues are calling for dates and shows. In my brain this translates to the work...
My son loved this book when he was three Emergent readers are typically children, but they can also be adults, who are just beginning to learn the forms of grammar and written syntax found in literature. To Read Up in this context means to have someone read something...
source This story has been sitting in my body for days. It wants to be shared. Long ago, in China, there was a fearsome serpent who lived in the Yung Mountains. His head was as big as a large rice barrel and his body was fearsomely long. When...
source 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...
source There are few things worse than blundering into a performance situation that is annoying or horrible. We all have types of shows we won’t do. For every performer who runs screaming, another would do the venue at the drop of a hat. Some people like birthday parties. Some...
Storytellers tend to feel it when we hit it out of the park. When we leave a stage or a classroom after having been incredibly successful, we can feel it all through our body. There is the energy, the excitement, the lavish praise, the joyful expressions and the contentment ...
Some years ago, after a storytelling set, a curriculum teacher told me she really wanted to start using storytelling in the classroom. She asked me what would be the best grade to implement such a thing. I know I had one of those run over by a train looks on...
Strong? What does it mean to be strong? Delilah beguiled Samson, lay with him, and when he was asleep, she cut his hair. When the deed was done she called to him, “Wake up Samson, the Philistines have come!” Without his hair, Samson had no strength and the Philistines...
February is always an exhausting month for me. My running joke is that even people who didn’t know they needed a performer of any kind suddenly need a black one in February! I work with all kinds of audiences. Sixth grade is one of my favorites. Sixth grade is...