Reading Well(s)

 For storytelling with a book, I wanted to shy away from books I thought kids would already know. And while humorous books are always fun to share, I am intrigued with all the folktales I have been reading and their lessons. I wanted the challenge of sharing a folktale-like story, but it needed to have great pictures. Since this is the only storytelling assignment with a book, the pictures are important and need to be part of the way the story is told. I went back and forth between multiple books but ended up choosing Extra Yarn, in part because I love the team of Barnett/Klassen. I love the illustrations in this story; they add much warmth and explanation to a hard to imagine scenario (a sweater for a truck?). Plus the use of color is delightful. The story is by Mac Barnett, and it is illustrated by Jon Klassen who always has a subtle. dry humor in his picture book illustrations (observe the animals and watch for the random appearance of the bear from I Want my Hat Back ).  O...

 Let's talk about storytelling.  I want to start off by saying storytelling is new me. I am not a part of a culture that uses storytelling (just finished the YA book  Firekeeper's Daughter which is in part about Native American storytelling....definitely recommend). And I don't recall being exposed to storytellers at a library, just read alouds. So this is all very new to me.  From our textbook This week we read chapters 1-6 in Storytelling: Art and Technique by Ellin Greene and Janice Del Negro. Chapter 1 detailed histories of some famous storytellers, and what stood out to me was Shedlock's description of how carefully she chose storytellers: "Poor storytelling is more disastrous than poor story-writing" (p. 14). It would seem that, like teaching, there are some people who are just natural storytellers. While we can improve our storytelling skills, I wonder how many of us will be naturals?  In Chapter 2, I was delighted to read about Thorne-Thompson'...