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Book
Excerpts:
If you have never seen an indifferent child aroused or a hostile one
conquered to affection by a beguiling tale, you can hardly appreciate the
truth of the first statement; but nothing is more familiar in the story-teller's experience. An amusing, but--to me--touching experience
recently reaffirmed in my mind this power of the story to establish friendly relations.
My three-year-old niece, who had not seen me since her babyhood, being
told that Aunt Sara was coming to visit her, somehow confused the expected
guest with a more familiar aunt, my sister. At sight of me, her rush of
welcome relapsed into a puzzled and hurt withdrawal, which yielded to no
explanations or proffers of affection.
All the first day she followed me about at a wistful distance, watching me as if I might at any moment turn
into the well-known and beloved relative I ought to have been. Even by
undressing time I had not progressed far enough to be allowed intimate
approach to small sacred nightgowns and diminutive shirts.
The next morning, when I opened the door of the nursery where her maid was brushing
her hair, the same dignity radiated from the little round figure perched
on its high chair, the same almost hostile shyness gazed at me from the
great expressive eyes. Obviously, it was time for something to be done.
Disregarding my lack of invitation, I drew up a stool, and seating myself
opposite the small unbending person, began in a conversational murmur:
"M--m, I guess those are tingly-tanglies up there in that curl Lottie's
combing; did you ever hear about the tingly-tanglies?
They live in little girls' hair, and they aren't any bigger than
that, and when anybody tries to comb the hair they curl both weeny legs round,
so, and hold on tight with both weeny hands, so, and won't let go!" As I paused, my
niece made a queer little sound indicative of query battling with reserve.
I pursued the subject: "They like best to live right over a little girl's
ear, or down in her neck, because it is easier to hang on, there; tingly-tanglies are very smart, indeed."
"What's ti-ly-ta-lies?" asked a curious, guttural little voice.
I explained the nature and genesis of tingly-tanglies, as revealed to me
some decades before by my inventive mother, and proceeded to develop their
simple adventures. When next I paused the small guttural voice demanded,
"Say more," and I joyously obeyed.
When the curls were all curled and the last little button buttoned, my
baby niece climbed hastily down from her chair, and deliberately up into
my lap. With a caress rare to her habit she spoke my name, slowly and
tentatively, "An-ty Sai-ry?" Then, in an assured tone, "Anty Sairy, I love
you so much I don't know what to do!" And, presently, tucking a confiding
hand in mine to lead me to breakfast, she explained sweetly, "I didn' know
you when you comed las' night, but now I know you all th' time!"
"Oh, blessed tale," thought I, "so easy a passport to a confidence so
desired, so complete!" Never had the witchery of the story to the ear of a
child come more closely home to me. But the fact of the witchery was no
new experience. The surrender of the natural child to the story-teller is
as absolute and invariable as that of a devotee to the priest of his own
sect.
This power is especially valuable in the case of children whose natural
shyness has been augmented by rough environment or by the strangeness of
foreign habit. And with such children even more than with others it is
also true that the story is a simple and effective means of forming the
habit of concentration, of fixed attention; any teacher who deals with
this class of children knows the difficulty of doing this fundamental and
indispensable thing, and the value of any practical aid in doing it.
More than one instance of the power of story-telling to develop attentiveness comes to my mind, but the
most prominent in memory is a
rather recent incident, in which the actors were boys and girls far past
the child-stage of docility.
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