Assignment 4: Story Set

For my final assignment I chose 3 stories that I loved in my younger years. Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little pigs were told to me many times by my family as we went on long boring walks on the weekends. I would request that my Dad tell a “mixed-up fairy tale” and thought that the little side notes that took the story out of the traditional were the funniest thing in the world (once he told me that the 3rd little pig flipped the switch to make the fire in the gas fireplace and I still think it’s hilarious). I was sure to add a number of silly asides for you.

The story “Lettuce is Too Flat” was introduce to me by my sister a few years ago. We owned “Garth Pig and the Ice Cream Lady” when we were growing up and were thrilled when we ran across a whole series of books about the 10 little piglets. I thought about creating a Big Bad Wolf theme for the storytelling set and using Garth Pig --the 10-seater bicycle is something to be marveled at, as well as the oddities of “chocolate woooshies”, but that would have put me way over the time limit (already broken), and “Lettuce is Too Flat” is one of my “favoruite” stories. I believe that Benjamin’s plight is universally understood.
I also chose these stories because of their repetitive bits in threes “What big… you have” and “Little Pig, Little Pig…” are wonderful repetitions and stick in your head. Benjamin Pig echoes this with “I don’t like…” which fits him in this triad of stories.

My goal for this storytelling set is to break away from my pure narration of storytelling and add some dialog. I’ve hear my classmates do wonderful things with the pitch tone, speed, and intensity of their voices to create characters, and so here I tried to emulate that. Let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Here is my final storytelling set in internet explorer. For Firefox you can click here. It runs a little over 15 minutes (15 minutes and 11 seconds)

Evening of Storytelling!

Last night 2 classmates and I got together to perform stories for our friends and families. It was lots of fun, and I think it went really well.
We each preformed 3 tales, all of mine have been posted on this blog before, but I think it's really nice to hear it again with a different audience, in a different atmosphere than a library storytime. Let me know what you think about them, too!

If you're only going to listen to one I would suggest The Very Hungry Caterpillar, because for the first time it is performed in front of a live audience (who was very familiar with the story, and I thought would tell the whole thing for me. It was really neat).



Here also are Rabbit's Snow Dance and Popcorn, which are neat to hear again because the audience is different, and it's in a different location (and I've practiced a lot more).
Rabbit's Snow dance:


Popcorn:


Enjoy!

Assignment 3: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

For assignment 3 we are supposed to adapt a picture book to the storytelling format.
Inspired by Pete Seeger's Abiyoyo I decided to put mine to music. Unfortunately I don’t play the banjo (yet), but one of my co-workers, knowing my interest in the ukulele loaned me his for a couple of weeks. I quickly mastered 3 cords.
The theme of this Saturday’s storytime will be “Days of the Week” and so I broke out the Very Hungry Caterpillar flannel set from BCL, and made up a song for you to enjoy. Click here to view my 4 minute story in Internet Explorer. Click here to view my story in Fire Fox.


You may have to adjust the volume on your computer.
Let me know what you think!