The magic of a story well told

"Storytelling is too good an opportunity to miss". These were the words which ended the article entitled Telling tales: learning and language (June 11). How true they are.

Storytelling needs to be done well if we want it to have the best possible effect. Michael Morpurgo, who has been nominated children's laureate in the UK, will do precisely this during his two-year term in office.

However, he is sceptical about the emphasis being put on the 'learning' side of storytelling rather than the joy of listening to the story itself. He speaks about the need to discover the "fun, excitement and discovery of reading".

Storytelling does not mean, of course, reading in a cold, unfeeling and detached way. Neither does it involve teaching children verbs or anything else, irrespective of how well the story lends itself to doing so.

Storytelling should only be about the ability and power to transmit and nurture the joy, the excitement and the "what's going to happen next" of the story. Putting other ingredients into the pot of this art may result in missing the story's magic.

The learning part will come about naturally as a result of good stories and good tellers. Storytelling helps our children to widen their vocabulary and improve their ability to express themselves, their listening skills, articulation, understanding of concepts and chronology of events, as well as stimulate their fantasy.

The only thing we should teach directly are the new words found in the story to enhance the listeners' understanding.

Storytelling is an art. Therefore, the teller needs to have 'telling-skills': facial expressions, different voices for different characters, simple hand movements, word pointing and assimilation. (Children make a lot of connections between words/sentences and their personal experiences. Good storytelling helps these connections to take place so that the children can understand to story better).

Another important aspect is the language used. Keeping the same language throughout the story is very important. Any switching of languages - between English and Maltese - needs to be made clear to the audience especially when they are young. If the story is in English, the same language is to be used throughout the session and all answers are to be in English. Likewise if the story is in Maltese.

Children need to be helped to express themselves, especially if they are shy, as some of them may not be exposed to the language being used in the story and therefore, may feel embarrassed about making mistakes. This is done by the way the teller handles answers from the audience.

For this special art you also need special books. Big books! I would like to encourage Maltese authors to venture into big typeface. We definitely need such big books in Maltese, and the sooner the better.

Along with a good text you also need good illustrations. If a picture tells a thousand words, good pictures say even more! The combination of a good author and a good illustrator would produce a winning big book for our Maltese youngsters!

Mr Laferla is a librarian