Our first Accessible Book and Story Festival (in September) will have a focus on sensory stories. As we plan the festival we have been thinking about the fundamentals of sensory storytelling. In this second of three blog posts we consider how to choose stories to adapt as sensory stories.
At My Kind of Book we love sensory stories with a lot of repetition and a simple strong structure. These stories are easy to remember so we can have more fun telling them. (We are not worrying about what comes next!)
Folktales usually have a simple structure and we love turning them into sensory stories for this reason. They are usually easy to tell and also easy to engage with. In fact we believe that a lot of the satisfaction people get from these types of stories comes from their structure rather than their content. They can be listened to almost in the same way as we would listen to a piece of music. We ‘get’ the story without necessarily understanding every word and at the end we give a little sigh of satisfaction.
Folktales also tend to contain lots of rhyme, rhythm and exaggerated tone and pace This language is interesting and stimulating for our story groups. When a storyteller huffs and puffs and blows the house down or trip traps over the troll’s bridge they are using language that is different enough from everyday chat to encourage people take notice and engage.
And the language is not enjoyable simply because of its meaning but also because of its sound. The language becomes part of the sensory experience of the story.
Finally we love folktales because they are so adaptable. As we adapt them into sensory stories we can mould them to suit the sensory experiences our story groups need. (Or to suit the props we have in our cupboards!)
Remember folktales belong to us all! They were being told long before they were written down and put into books. And at that time there would have been many different versions of all of our favourite tales. So if we want Jack to steal a drum instead of a harp or the Little Red Hen to make spaghetti instead of bread that is just fine!
We have some free sensory story folktales to download in our shop and our blog. We would also recommend the following books:
The Folk Tales of Scotland: The Well at the World’s End and Other Stories, by William Montgomerie and Norah Montgomerie (Birlinn Ltd)
A World Full of Nature Stories: 50 Folktales and Legends by Angela McAllister (Author), Hannah Bess Ross (Illustrator)
(The other books in this series are also good.)
See also The Wonders of Sensory Storytelling Part 1: The Props
And: The Wonders of Sensory Storytelling Part 3: Telling the Stories
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