For the Story Teller: Story Telling and Stories to Tell: Preface

For the Story Teller: Story Telling and Stories to Tell, by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey is part of the HackerNoon Books series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here.

The new-old art of story telling is being rediscovered. We are finding that the children’s daily story hour in school, in the neighborhood house, and at home is a real force for mental and moral good in their lives. We are learning that it is possible to educate children by means of stories.

Story telling to be a developing factor in a child’s life must be studied by the story teller. There are good stories and there are poor stories for children. The story that fits a child’s needs to-day may not prove a wise choice for him to-morrow. Some stories teach, some stories only give joy, some stories inspire, some stories just make a child laugh. Each of these story phases is important. To discover these special types of stories, to fit stories to the individual child or child group, and to make over stories for perfect telling has been my aim in writing this book.

Through telling stories to many thousands of children and lecturing to students I have found that story telling is a matter of psychology. The pages that follow give my new theory of story telling to the teacher or parent.