Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

“ Oldest of all our emotions, since we share it alike with animals, fear peculiarly takes hold of a child during the early years when he is most interested in stories. The story situation that seems quite plausible to us and not in the least terrorizing, haunts a child at night, peers from shadowy corners at him in the daytime and makes of him, unwittingly, a little coward. The troll with only one eye, the giant who cracks human bones, the witch who exercises horrible spells should all be buried in some tomb of forgetfulness. ”

“ Its hero, the Green Goblin, wishes to become a fairy. The story of his changing his ugly colors for those of the flowers when he promises never to hurt them again, losing his harsh, shrill voice by being kind to the brook, and so gradually finding beauty, is a marvellously compelling bit of imagery to leave with a child and it is told in familiar, right-at-hand word pictures. ”

“ A child’s mind at the age when he is able to concentrate upon listening to a story, three or four years of age—kindergarten age—is not a very crowded house. It is a mind-house tenanted by a few and very simple concepts which he has made his own through his previous home, mother and play experiences. He is familiar with his nursery, his pets, his family, his toys, his food, his bed. If he is a country child he knows certain flowers, birds and farm animals, not as classes—flower, bird and animal—but as buttercup, robin and sheep. ”

“ Could there be a more stimulating story beginning for a group of boys than this? There is an apperceptive appeal in the Indian lad. He was not a man, not a chieftain, but just a little lad like themselves. There is an immediate [48] sense appeal in the steam-engine image that the story beginning brings to their minds. Smoke, smell, bell ringing, whistle blowing, steam escaping, and the rattle of iron wheels on iron tracks are all recalled to a boy’s mind in one glorious bit of imagination whose only stimulus is the word engine. ”

“ There is no more beautiful story in all literature than Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf.” It is full of the sensory appeal, the colorful word picturing, the imagery, the ethics which we look for in a perfect story, but as it stands in the best translation, it is almost three thousand words [237] long and so hedged about with Andersen’s beautiful, but adult philosophy that it is quite beyond the comprehension of children. As a result, it is seldom told to children and is one of the least well-known of the author’s fairy tales. ”

“ A child’s story, to interest, should have a strong sense appeal.
Many of the old, handed-down jingles and folk tales are full of eating and drinking, smelling delectable odors, hearing the sounds of child life and seeing over again child scenes. Therein lies their world appeal and the reason for their ancient and obvious popularity. ”

“ A being with hair like his favorite small girl friend, and the stature of his little sister’s doll, having wings like the dragon fly he saw last summer and dressed in something colored and soft and rustling like his mother’s dresses, a person capable of doing all that the story books say she can do—this is a child’s mind picture of a fairy. ”

“ I never afterward found difficulty in holding the attention of this special group of boys. I had been able to establish a bond of sympathy between the boys and the story characters.
Touching a child’s life through the medium of a story is like a friendly hand clasp. An Irish folk tale told to a group of little sons and daughters of Erin, one of the Uncle Remus tales told to a kindergarten circle of little negroes, the story of one of our Italian operas adapted to the understanding of Sicilian and Neapolitan children, one and all mean enriching those child lives. ”

“ A good fairy story is like the touch of spice that gives the needed zest to a dish, it is the sweet at the end of the meal, it should not be spoiled by over use, by voraciousness. We will select our fairy stories with the utmost care, measuring each by our threefold rule. ”

“ In the case of the lower animals this instinct manifests itself in a perpetual warfare waged tooth and nail against its life enemies, with a result epitomized, always, in the survival of the stronger animal. Primitive man waged a similar warfare. With a peaceful civilization this condition of individual warfare has been done away with, but the instinct to fight for his rights, to preserve his ego, to keep selfishly for his own certain things is a part of the child’s mental heritage from his forbears. The rhythm instinct, the Nature instinct are the gold mine in child development. ”

“ There was a third little gentleman who went to the same school as Henry and Francis, and his name was Gratian. One day his mother, whom he loved very dearly, sent him a cake because she also loved him. No sooner had it arrived than Gratian called his friends all about him, and said:
“Come! Look at what my mother has sent me. You must, each one, have a piece.” So the children all got around the cake as bees resort to a flower, just blown, and Gratian divided the cake with a knife into as many pieces as he had invited boys, with one piece over, for himself. ”

“ We are teaching him to smell, taste, see color, discriminate forms and textiles, to open the telegraphic circuit of his senses. We are putting the world of realities into the arms of the feeble-minded child to touch, feel, taste, smell, see. So we educate him, but we must carry out the same system of sense training in his stories, selecting for his hearing those stories that make verbal and recall his previously acquired sense impressions.
There is one other use to which we may put the sense story. It is a means of strengthening any child’s imagination. ”

“ There is a little noise at the back of the pantry, and the Country Mouse enters in great glee, looking about at all the food. The Cat sees the Country Mouse, and she creeps, softly, a little farther under the shelf, keeping watch of him all the time. ”

“ Why should the tired-out teacher spend long after-school hours sewing together costumes when, at an instant’s notice, a child is able to clothe himself in the sleek red coat and valiant brush of a fox? ”

“ Anders did not answer. He sat as before, and held on to his red cap which everybody was so eager to get. But when the King came nearer to him, with his gold crown between his hands, then Anders grew frightened as never before. If he did not take good care, the King might cheat him out of his cap; for a King can do whatever he likes. ”

“ The story stimulates in the listeners a deep interest in the old chime of bells that has hung silent for so long a time in the tower. One longs to hear them and waits anxiously for the miracle that will start their pealing. At the story climax, when an unselfish offering laid upon the altar works the wonder, it is possible to listen, in imagination, to the bells’ sweet music.
But why make this sense appeal to the child mind through the medium of a story, the story teller asks? ”

“ Selecting just the right ethical stories to tell a child having in mind making him unselfish is a delicate matter. Each story should present some problem in ethics that is likely to come up in the child’s life. Moreover, the moral of the story should be veiled but made so obvious by the suspensive treatment and climax of the story, that the child unconsciously makes it his own and applies the lesson to his own life. The moral of unselfishness is rather the result of the story than a part of it as the children make its obvious application to their own lives. ”

“ THE STORY WITH A SENSE APPEAL THE senses are the only avenues to the brain by means of which the outside world makes its way into a little child’s inner consciousness. A baby’s brain is an almost unexplored, untracked place, empty save for a few instinct paths—certain motor tracts tenanted by inherited memories which lead him to cry, to nurse, and to perform some other reflex movements. ”

“ Suppose a myth isn’t true. Was the Jack Frost story true; and isn’t there more real literature and imagery and inspiration in the story of Persephone than in any modern “Nature-faked” story? As a child stands on Mount Olympus in company with the gods he gets a vision of the universe that he would gain in no other way. As he rides in Phaëton’s chariot searching for the Apples of Hesperides and helps old Atlas hold the world upon his shoulders he is learning Nature as no text-book [131] can teach her. ”

“ There must be no long explanation, no descriptive scenes and painful dragging in of the plot. Children do not care a rap for the creating of atmosphere. They do not care how long ago the story events happened, or why they happened. What they are eager for is a quick story appeal made the second that the story curtain rolls up.
Each story told to children ought to be selected having in mind its beginning. The story teller must ask herself another set of questions:
“Does the story interest begin with my first paragraph, my first sentence, my first word?” ”

“ Because of the popularity of so-called story dramatization among kindergartners and primary teachers, a school of child acting in kindergartens and the grades has sprung into life. Stories are dramatized for children rather than by the children themselves, and the results obtained through unnecessary costuming, certain stage properties and memorized dialogue are of no appreciable value in the mental development of the child. A child impersonates a pig gifted with human attributes, spontaneously, but he plays the part of a dressed-up fairy in a wooden, unspontaneous fashion. ”

“ IMAGINATION AND THE FAIRY STORY WHAT is child imagination?
The Puritans thought the imaginative person was a liar. Old Salem said that such a vision as is conjured into reality by the imagination constituted witchcraft. Even to-day there are parents and teachers who believe that the child who has the power to pierce the veil of reality and see into a beyond is a dreamer who lacks stability of mind and practicality of purpose. ”

“ The Little Old Man falls fast asleep again, his pipe falling to the floor. As he sleeps, the oven door opens a little as if some one had pushed it from the inside. The real Gingerbread Boy peeps out through the crack. When he sees that the Little Old Man is asleep, he steps out. He begins blowing on his fingers and he puts them in his mouth as if they were burned. He fans himself with the baking tin which he brings with him out of the oven, and he hops about the kitchen on the tips of his toes. ”

“ How does it stimulate the imagination?
The old, loved fairy stories that have lived for centuries stand this test. The story of Cinderella leaves a child with a mental picture of a cinder maid full blown into a princess but with this image is the lesson of rewarded faithfulness to duty, and the story plot is built up of familiar concepts ”

“ This careful and concrete statement of the law governing instinctive movement gives us our cue for selecting stories for child dramatizing and our method in presenting them, having in view—not child acting, but spontaneous child action. We will provide no costumes for our children, set no stage, but only give them that story which will suggest to them a recent, frequently repeated, vivid experience with its accompanying satisfying results in certain spontaneous movements. ”

“ USING SUSPENSE TO DEVELOP CONCENTRATION BECAUSE we have discovered that a story is able to do much for a child; make him feel comfortable and at home in a new environment because it brings to his mind so compellingly the well-known and loved surroundings of some former environment, stimulate his senses to added activity, and secure his involuntary attention, we are going one step farther. We will make a fresh discovery. We will find a story quality that will develop sustained attention in children; will give them the power to concentrate. ”

“ A shiny black bumble bee tumbled down to the deck with his gold, gossamer wings and began to drone summer stories to the buttercups. A silver dragon fly darted down to the ship with his rainbow tinted wings to mend [80] the white strings of the daisies’ caps which had been torn by the frolicsome Whispering Wind. When Bobby’s ship reached the other wharf it looked like an excursion boat, but, ah, Dicky’s ship was quite empty. There had been no flower children on board to call the butterflies, the bumble bees and the dragon flies. ”

“ The psychologists classify and subdivide the emotions into many divisions but the story teller is most concerned with making one elastic, wide classification of a child’s emotions; those that are concerned with bodily expression. A child is happy, he laughs; he is sad and he cries; he is angry, he fights; he is afraid, and he gives active evidence of cowardice. Because, during the time of his obsession by one of these emotions, a child is so completely mastered by his feelings, we discover that we can create for him by story suggestion a similar mental state. ”

“ THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY
Place: A mouse hole in a barn.
Time: The early evening of a day in the fall.
The Father, Mother, and younger mice are seen, sitting about, and nibbling bits of candles, turnips, carrots, and other dainties.
The Father, taking a large bite of turnip, and speaking between mouthfuls:
“I have been a mile to the south and a mile back to-day without meeting an enemy. I found a field of corn, and a garden of turnips, and a patch of large, juicy cabbages. For a comfortable, fat old age, there is no place like the country.” ”

“ Other children have similar emotions.
We will study stories, then, asking ourselves:
What emotion does this story stimulate?
By its unpleasant situations and images, does it inspire fear in a child? Does it make a child happy because of its bubbling good humor? Does it create child sympathy, courage, grief, anger, malice, charity, temperance? Each one of these states of feeling is characterized by bodily expression and we can almost mold character, and influence a child’s future life activity by means of the stories which we tell him. ”

“ The second story teller illustrated a method of securing a child’s involuntary, almost unconscious attention.
Especially in the case of the little child who is beginning his school work, and even up to the more mature years of childhood, voluntary attention, that mental operation in which the will is called upon to open the doors of the senses and let in knowledge, is almost too much for us to ask of a child. The wonderful machinery of the mind has provided another and much more economic means of knowledge acquisition. ”

“ By the time she had finished Grimm’s story of “The Pot and the Kettle,” in which, as a climax, neither is able to taunt the other with being black, the children’s anger was gone, peace was restored, and the children were smiling. An emotional crisis had been successfully met by means of a story.
Our emotions, that is, our feelings of anger, joy, sorrow, hatred, jealousy, and love are older than we are. They may almost be classed as instinctive, for they manifest themselves so early. The baby gives examples of emotional explosions in his first month. ”

“ A large percentage of the stories printed for children are too long. The story that is too short and needs to be “padded” for telling is very rarely to be found. In the case of the Fables of Æsop and Bidpai the skeleton only of each story is given and here the problem of adapting for the story teller is to find a way of filling in each picture in order to make the story of the desired length.
But how shall we shorten the too-long story that we want children to hear because of its compelling theme and motif, but which is, very likely, two thousand or twenty-five hundred words long? ”

“ A child cries at a pain, laughs when he is tickled, starts in fear at a sudden and loud noise. These are the primitive forms of instinctive expression, but beyond these and through the use of certain child stories that are full of action, compelling dialogue, and quick movement comes a development of the dramatic instinct in childhood of wonderful value to the teacher. ”