Storytelling Tips and Activities for Librarians

Librarians and Teachers

Until just a few years ago storytelling was an endangered art. Fortunately many insightful educators and librarians led what can best be described as a storytelling Renaissance.

By championing ethnic storytellers, helping promote storytelling festivals and most important, inviting storytellers into the school room and library, teachers and librarians have exposed a new generation of children to the fun and excitement of told tales.

But many challenges remain if we want to continue to breathe life into America's rich storytelling tradition. The biggest challenge is to inspire children to step out of the audience to create and tell their own stories.

Here’s where TallTales Audio plans to help. Please use the six stories we offer for free download in your classroom or library. And don't overlook our "Make up a Story" feature where we present the first few paragraphs of new stories and invite children to finish them. Because these stories put popular TallTales Audio characters in exciting situations we have repeatedly been told that children who have never before made up a story are excited to finish them. 

Over the next year, we plan to provide more suggestions, tips, and success stories that to help you help children succeed at storytelling. Please bookmark our site and check back in the months ahead as we develop new features and better yet email us your ideas. And for more ideas, don’t forget out our page with storytelling links.

Choose from these exciting, original kids’ audio stories.

Clem the Detective Dog
Ralphie The Gopher
Sheriff Daisy & Deputy Bud
Rainbow of the Sioux
The Monotonia Chronicles
Tibbodnock Stories
Fiona the Smart Ghost
Ivan the Not-So-Terrible
Nikki the Invisible Girl
Sarabel to the Rescue

Storytelling in the public library is becoming increasingly popular.
From children’s storytelling hours, to storytelling workshops for both adults and children, to library sponsored storytelling festivals, loads of librarians are involved—some in telling stories and many others in organizing events. Recognizing that there is often overlap between successful storytelling approaches in school and library (please see the Teachers heading, above), here are a few ideas you may find helpful in creating or expanding your library’s storytelling offerings.

Story Hour
At the most basic, this involves inviting area storytellers to tell children’s tales, usually on weekends, and often when the weather is likely to be inclement. If possible, and especially if you’ll welcome children of different ages, it often works best to present two or three tellers on each story program. Especially when you are starting a new program, it may be a daunting task to find tellers whose stories will truly delight children in your target age group. But if you spread the word via an in library notice, and via the Internet you’ll likely have no shortage of volunteers, in fact you may get too many and some of whom aren’t qualified.

To assure you present a quality program you’ll want to carefully vet your volunteers by requesting tapes or CDs. Don’t be afraid to say “no” if the stories aren’t sufficiently compelling or aren’t appropriate for your audience. Over time, you’ll attract and retain better tellers if you are able to pay a small honorarium. If your budget doesn’t otherwise permit, this can be a perfect activity for a Friends of the Library group to support.

TIP. Every Librarian A Storyteller: If you haven’t already begun your own storytelling career why not give it a try. After all, you already love stories and kids so the prospect of telling your own yarns shouldn’t be daunting. Check out this website for lots of tips on how to tell riveting stories.

Storytelling Workshops
Sponsor a children’s storytelling workshop where kids are encouraged to develop their own storytelling skills. Typically, workshops which usually last about 2 hours per session work particularly well during mid-term or intra-term school breaks when many parents seek a fun learning experience. One big key to making this type of program work is to recruit a knowledgeable leader – either a volunteer or by paying a small stipend. Above, under the Teachers section, we discuss some good approaches to helping children learn storytelling. If by the end of the week each child can stand in front of the group and tell an original story, you’ll know your workshop has been a big success.

Storytelling Festivals
Libraries with adequate staffing will want to consider a magnet-type storytelling event, the day-long storytelling festival being the most common. Obviously, festivals are most successful when they are well promoted and feature tellers who have a following. Some festivals present an eclectic program of storytellers telling many different types of tales. But it often works better and is easier to promote if you have a focus stories from a particular ethnic tradition, historical period or subject matter (Tall Tales About Big Bears, for example).

Storytelling Collections
Some libraries still lump all their children’s audio materials into one big section. This is the equivalent of putting plays and novels in the same section because they are both bound and printed. Especially if you will promote or sponsor storytelling in your library, it’s far better to separate your storytelling collection from your audio books. Although superficially all audio material is similar, reading and telling stories is very different, a fact parents and children are becoming increasingly attuned to.

Click here for a list of web resources on storytelling.

©2007 TallTales Audio