“They won’t be able to sit for long. You’ll have to make it short.”
So said a teacher to Diane Wolkstein, master storyteller, who was about to do a presentation for a room full of young children.
“Just watch them,” said Diane. “I’ve had children sit in rapt attention for over an hour,” she told the teacher.
I was in the graduate education program at Brooklyn College and we were lucky enough to have Diane give a presentation on effective storytelling which she knew a lot about. In 1967 Diane founded the storytelling program in Central Park, where she began entertaining children with classic tales at the foot of the Hans Christian Andersen statue by the Boat Lake. The program continues today, although Diane passed in 2013.
Children have been listening to stories as long as there have been adults to recite them. Stories came first, writing came later. And then stories in books…well that’s a whole other discussion…