The Parent's Guide to Storytelling: How to Make Up New Stories and Retell Old Favorites - Paperback

by Margaret Read MacDonald (Author)

Children of all ages love hearing stories. Many parents, though, freeze when their children ask them to tell a story rather than read one, or panic when they begin to lose their attention mid-story. Margaret Read MacDonald comes to the rescue with a collection of helpful hints and techniques-everything from when to raise or lower your voice to suggested refrains for audience participation. She explains how to capture children's attention with easy-to-use dramatic techniques and fingerplays. Chapters focus on storytelling for the youngest listeners, bedtime stories and expandable tales, scary stories, improvisational ideas, and family folklore. To help beginners get started, MacDonald includes dozens of traditional stories as examples in easy-to-follow format. Includes a useful bibliography divided into topic areas, including old standards and new collections.

Author Biography

Margaret Read MacDonald Bio:

Margaret Read MacDonald is a professional storyteller, award winning author and highly respected consultant who travels the world telling stories and conducting workshops for educators. Her most popular workshop "Playing with Stories" has been offered in over 70 countries. She has been invited to storytelling and literary festivals in Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore. In addition, Dr. MacDonald teaches storytelling to classroom teachers for the Lesley University Creative Education through the Arts program. For years, she also taught storytelling as an Adjunct Professor with the University of Washington Information School.Dr. MacDonald is the author of over 60 books on folklore and storytelling topics, including many award winning folktale picture books. She has been telling stories since 1964 in her work as a children's librarian, and she holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University along with an M.Ed.EC. (Educational Communications Masters) from the University of Hawaii and a Master's of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Washington. She is well known for her ability to create texts that delight the ear and are easy for teachers to share. Teaching with Story contains 20 of these useful stories that can be used by teachers with their students.