Get them to JUMP

"Use different inflections of voice to add moments of fear or excitement to your story. In general, tell a story with intensity and direct contact.

At a certain point in the story where you know that the victim or person in the story might let out a scream - break your intensity with a sudden shout or scream.

With proper timing everyone listening will literally lift about two inches off their seats."
--from "Campfire Stories" by William Forgey, M.D.

Demonstrated by Stephanie at the library's "Summer Scaries" program.

The Storyteller in Motion

"...there do seem to be certain places in a story where simple gestures can effectively enhance an action being described or can clarify a meaning..."

(Ramon R. Ross in "Storyteller")

The audience listening to Patty agrees that gestures definitely enhance the tale!

The Blue Hole

"An interesting group of Hoosier place legends deals with bottomless lakes, a ubiquitous motif in American folklore. What may be unusual, however, is that several of the Hoosier bottomless lakes are named Blue Hole, a descriptive name suggesting a deep pool of blue water...

Often accompanying the bottomless lake motif in lakes named Blue Hole...are accounts of hidden treasure, enormous fish, giant montsters, lost buggies or wagons, wrecked automobiles, and especially derailed trains in the lake..."


From "Hoosier Folk Legends" by Ronald L. Baker

About the difference between folktale and legend

"The folktale (Märchen ) is with good reason distinguished from the legend, though by turns they play into one another. Looser, less fettered than legend, the folktale lacks that local habitation which hampers legend, but makes it more home-like.

The folktale flies, the legend walks, knocks at your door; the one can draw freely out of the fullness of poetry, the other has almost the authority of history...."

Jacob Grimm, in Teutonic Mythology.

If you go for a walk with a librarian...

If you go for a walk by the lake with a librarian,

you will be reminded of a story.

and if you are reminded of a story,

you will have to tell that story.





And if you tell that story,

everyone will have a good time!