Shake-It-up Tales!: Stories to Sing, Dance, Drum, and Act Out Book

As any good storyteller knows, audience participation often makes the difference between a so-so story and a terrific tale. Here, veteran performer Margaret Read MacDonald shares her experience in this collection of multicultural stories that involve plenty of audience involvement. You'll find riddle stories, improvisational stories, singing tales, tandem tales, and much more.

VOYA

Twenty international tales that include eXciting characters, such as the big bad wolf, a wicked dragon, and an old lady attacked by her house, are organized here into three sections by specific storytelling techniques. These methods range from adding sound effects"flup... flup... flup"to selecting and incorporating actors from an audience. An annotated bibliography introduces each chapter, and at the end of each story, "Tips for Telling" and "About the Story" sections suggest other versions to read, point out telling steps to skip if the audience gets restless, or eXplain how to complete a related activity, such as constructing rattling rattlesnakes. Each story's teXt is spaced to clue the teller for rhythms and pauses, but MacDonald emphasizes that the teller must become one with the story, eventually putting the written teXt aside and opening up to improvisation. Ample space for the storyteller's notes is provided. The stories and methods seem most helpful for librarians, teachers, caregivers, or family members who tell stories to young children. In the author's earlier The StoryTeller's Startup Book (August House, 1993), MacDonald suggests choosing "quieter" stories for the teenage group. These stories are not quiet nor are they like the popular urban stories compiled by David Holt and Bill Mooney in Spiders in the Hairdo (August House, 1999). MacDonald notes, however, that junior or senior high students might tune in to folktales when they tell them to children. Learning to tell the stories in this resource will help young adults, librarians, teachers, or parents and grandparents awaken or reinforce a love of folkstories and storytelling, $14.95 pb. Biblio. Source Notes. FurtherReading. 2000, August House, 176p, $24.95. Ages 12 to Adult. Reviewer: Lucy Schall

SOURCE: VOYA, December 2000 (Vol. 23, No. 5) <%ISBN%> 0874835909