Good storytellers can transform an entire audience. I witnessed this each week at summer camp, where a storyteller would come to entertain the children and their families as the concluding event of the week. A noisy and squirmy group of around 60 children would transform into a still and silent hush of eager eyes pointed directly at the storyteller as he or she began to speak. It felt like magic - like somebody had cast a spell over everyone listening.
So, there are certainly tricks to the trade when it comes to being an effective storyteller. I've always known this, but it became particularly evident one week at camp when the storyteller did not show up! We'd gathered our 60 campers around the seating area, all waiting with anticipation for the stories to come. But the storyteller didn't arrive and as time started to tick by, we realised we had to do something other than wait...
So I said, "I'll tell a story."
I had never told a story without reading from a book in this type of setting ever in my life... But I'd always wanted to try it.
I nervously stepped out in front of the group and started to tell a story I'd heard only once before at a Forest School session. It was about a robin who runs into some trouble while seeking shelter from some trees in winter. The story goes that a little pine tree was the only tree kind enough to allow the robin to shelter in its branches and so the Great Wind decided to teach all the other trees a lesson by blowing off their leaves, leaving them bare and cold through winter... the story sparks an element of curiosity about why some trees lose their leaves in winter and some don't.
