Then she told the little girl that the tulip story was not in a
book, and that she must tell it to her grandmother just as she
remembered hearing it, and that having seen the fairies while she
listened would help her to remember the story better. She could
see pictures all the time she was telling stories, she said. The
little girl had never thought of making pictures for herself
before. She had only seen them in books and hanging on walls.
This unconscious tribute to the art of the storyteller made a
lasting impression on the children's librarian. If a child of
less than eight years, and of no exceptional parts, could so
clearly discriminate between the fairy tale she had heard at
school and the tale that made her "see the fairies," there was
little truth in the statement that children do not appreciate
artistic storytelling. She went back to her children's room
feeling that something worth while had happened. The children who
had listened to the stories now crowded about the book shelves,
eager for "any book about fairies," "a funny book," or "a book
about animals."
The little girl who had seen the fairies was not the only one who
had fallen under the spell of the storyteller. "I always knew
Pandora was a nice story, but she never seemed like a live girl
before," said one of the older girls. "I liked the Brahmin, the
Jackal and the Tiger best," exclaimed a boy. "Gee! but couldn't
you just see that tiger pace when she was saying the words?" "I
just love The Little Tin Soldier," said a small boy who hated to
read, but was always begging the children's librarian to tell him
stories about the pictures he found in books. "Didn't she make
him march fine!"
Before the end of the day the children's librarian had decided
that even if there could be but one such story hour in the
lifetime of an individual or an institution it would pay in
immediate and far-off results. But why stop with one; why not
have more story hours in children's libraries? Other children's
librarians were asking themselves the same question, and then
they asked their librarians, and those who recognized in the
story hour a powerful ally in stimulating a love of good
literature and a civilizing influence wherever the gang spirit
prevailed, gave ready assent.
Ten years have passed and the story hour is now an established
feature in the work of children's libraries. Miss Shedlock came
to America to tell stories to children and to their fathers and
mothers. She returned year after year to remind the schools and
colleges, the training schools and the kindergartens, as well as
the public libraries, of the great possibilities in what she so
aptly called "the oldest and the newest of the arts."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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