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 Tip No 3: Tell an Old New Story

Listen to Storytelling Tip No 3 or read it below:

Tall Tales Audio presents Storytelling Tips with Jake Warner. Each episode, Jake will provide another tip for improving your storytelling skills. Then, he’ll tell a story using that tip. This week’s tip: Tell an Old New Story.

Rich: Jake, what does that mean – “tell an old new story?”

Jake: Every kid has their favorite stories, and every kid – just like every adult – when they close that last page on their favorite story, they’re sad. There’s just that moment of, “Oh my gosh, there isn’t anymore!” Well, you have a chance to provide the more. You may not be as great as Kenneth Graham in The Wind and the Willows, or Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, but you can take those characters and let them continue - make them your own. Also, tap into your kids’ creativity, because your child is going to have their own wishes, predilections… whatever places they’d like those characters to go.

Rich: Okay, Jake. Let’s hear you use that tip in a story.

Jake: My Paul Bunyan story: Once upon a time, many, many years ago, big, big men went into the North woods to cut the monster trees that grew there. That was before they invented chain saws, and bulldozers, and log-haulers. In those long ago days, men had to cut a whole forest with nothing but an axe and a hand-saw, and they had to depend on horses, mules, and oxen to pull the logs out of the woods and then float them down-river to the saw mill where they were turned into boards.

Now, of all the big, big men in the North woods who cut the logs, one was way, way bigger than the rest. Paul Bunyan was his name, and he stood taller than the tallest tree, and wider than five grizzly bears standing side by side. And Babe, Paul’s great blue ox was even bigger than he was – so big, that when Paul and his men cut down a gigantic tree, Babe could pull it out of the forest without even having to grunt. Oh, I almost forgot – Paul and Babe worked with a group of ten loggers, all called Sven, even though two of the Svens were women. Now, keep this to yourself, but one of the big woman’s real names was Gertrude, and the other’s was Marguerite, but if a logger called them that – even if Paul Bunyan called men that – he got his ear boxed. “Just call me Sven,” Gertrude would say, boxing the logger’s left year. “Just call me Sven,” Marguerite would say, boxing the logger’s right ear. What can I say, except that once a man had his ears boxed a few times by those big ladies, he never called them Gertrude or Marguerite again.

But Paul Bunyan had a problem. Since all the Svens were almost as big as he was, they were always hungry. Hungry right after breakfast, very hungry right after lunch, and very, very hungry right after the biggest dinner you’ve ever seen. Paul worried that if he didn’t feed the Svens more, they might even try to eat his best friend Babe, the giant blue ox. But what was Paul Bunyan to do? He just didn’t have a pan big enough to cook food to feed all the Svens.

Finally, Paul decided to make his own pan – a huge iron frying pan bigger than two football fields. That way, he could make the world’s biggest pancake… a pancake so huge it would feed the Svens for a month. So, Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox climbed to the top of Iron Mountain, a mountain that looked like any other mountain from the outside, but on the inside, was filled with rock loaded with the mineral iron. Since Paul was a logger and needed to get back to the woods, he didn’t have time to dig in an iron mine. So, instead, he just kicked at the top of Iron Mountain with his giant boots. Since each of Paul’s feet was the size of a dump truck, it didn’t take him too long to kick out a big hole. Then, Babe turned around backwards and started kicking the mountaintop from the other side. Since Babe’s hooves were even bigger than Paul’s feet, it didn’t take them long to kick the top of the mountain right into the valley below. Then, while Paul scooped out gigantic handfuls of iron ore, the Svens cut down a hundred trees and made a giant fire.

When they heated the ore, red-hot iron flowed out, allowing Paul and the Svens to shape the biggest frying pan in the history of the world. But Paul Bunyan still had a problem: Where would he get enough eggs, milk, and flour to fill that gigantic pan? After scratching his big head with a tree trunk, Paul had an idea. He climbed back up Iron Mountain, and sat down in the comfortable hole where the tippy peak used to be, and then he opened his huge mouth and pretended to be a chicken: “Bock, bock, bock, bock!” Paul Bunyan’s voice was so loud, it echoed up and down the valleys, and over the ridges, and across the highest mountains, until it reached a hundred miles in every direction. After half an hour of going, “Bock, bock, bock! Bock, bock,” Paul switched to quacking: “Quack, quack, quack! Quack, quack!” Again, so loud that every duck in the North Country could hear. Well, as you probably guessed, every chicken and every duck who heard Paul bocking and quacking was so curious that they came running and hopping, hopping and flying, quacking and bocking, until the valley at the bottom of Iron Mountain was wall-to-wall feathers.

All this time, the Svens, of course, were busy running here and there, back and forth, picking up at least 5,000 eggs. When the chickens and ducks finally headed home, Paul went back up on Iron Mountain and took to mooing. “Moo, moo!” And, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, a thousand cows appeared in the little valley to find who in the wide, wide world could moo so loud, and lickety split, the ten Svens took to milking, until they had a lake of milk.

Finally, Paul sent Babe down the river valley all the way to the sawmill, where Paul and the Svens sold their logs. Attached to Babe’s left horn was a note with just two words: “Send flour,” it said. And, sure enough, two days later, Babe the blue ox came lumbering back up the valley with fifty barrels of flour tied on his back – at least five times more flour than any other ox in the world could carry.

The rest, of course, is history. Paul mixed all of the eggs, the milk, and the flour, dumped them into the iron pan, and cooked the biggest pancake the world had ever known – a pancake so big that it filled up all ten Svens, plus Paul and Babe for another month. So, it wasn’t for another thirty days that Paul again had to climb to the top of Iron Mountain and begin to, “Bock, bock, bock! Quack, quack, quack! Moo, moo,” because that’s how long that big pancake lasted.

Rich: Jake, you modified the Paul Bunyan story quite a bit. How’d you go about doing that?

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