Florida Library of Association

So let's talk a little, let's talk some more about Augusta Baker [Augusta Braxton Baker]. Do you--can you tell us, can you describe her for us and tell us maybe about some of your personal interactions with her?$$Okay, Augusta Baker, a tiny woman, but big. You know what I mean, big in what she could and as I told you she said, "You're gonna tell stories." Well they had told us that before but she really reinforced--"You're gonna tell--and remember when you're telling you are sharing this event and you are not the primary character therefore you dress down." "Do what?" "You dress down. You wear dark colors, no jewelry that jangles and you don't have a lot of stuff around you because you are just sharing an event." And then they would come around and you had to do a practice or practicum story while you know she's sitting there looking at you and you're saying okay am I doing this right? Am I gonna remember the events? And you're scared to death until she relax--you relax when you finish and she smiles at you and you know that you did okay. When I moved to Florida--moved--well, we're get to that more later, but when I moved to Florida I would come up in the summer, I was going back to Columbia [Columbia University, New York, New York] to get my master's in library science and I told Augusta I said, "I'm gonna be up for the summer, maybe I can do some part-time storytelling," and she would say, "I can give you ten hours a week if you do that much for me." And that's when I use to go down in the parks but remembering what she had taught you went out to the park. You might carry a book or two, but you really--she said your book is your Linus blanket. You're not reading to the children, you're telling them this story, and that what we really--I don't think the people much of that now. They use visuals and stuff like that but--$$So can you talk a little bit about that telling of a story? What's involved in telling a story versus reading a story?$$When you tell it, it you say, "This is the event at which I was present. And Adrienne [Adrienne Jones] for some reason you missed it but here's what happened," and then you tell this story, you tell the Anansi stories or you tell the Peter Rabbit story or you tell how the cat made the--got to make the sound that it does. The book may be over here, but you're telling and you know when you've done it okay because at one I have a favorite story and I tell 'The Cat's Purr' which was illustrated by Ashley Bryan, one of my favorite storytellers, and when I finished a little kid came up to me and she said, "You know what my cat didn't look like your cat." In her head she had a cat and, and that's, that's the thing that Augusta and all the early storytellers embedded in your head that you were going to tell so that your audience visualize in their own heads what was happening, and the pacing and the diction I mean they, they were strict on how you did it.$$So tell us a bit about that, what did Ms. Baker instruct you in terms of the framework of the nuts and bolts of telling a story?$$The first place you learn the story, you don't say, "Today I'm gonna tell 'The Cat's Purr,'" pick it up today and go tell it. You've read it and you've read it again and you read it again. You've told it in front of a mirror, you've told it on tape. You put the book way aside and then tell it again until it's down to where you want it to be. The pacing, the diction, the motion and she would say, "Now remember, motion is not--if you're running up a hill you don't run across the floor, you let them see you by your motion run up that hill. If you fall down, don't fall down because if you fall down you're gonna have trouble getting up." And she would you know give you those, those kind of things. You don't go in with any chewing gum in your mouth, she would just--and if you had long hair enough of these distractions or things you know getting your hair out--none of that. Every motion you make had to be important to that story or you don't make it, and every--even if you told the story yesterday you don't go tomorrow and tell it again without refreshing the story. It makes it look easy but it's because you worked--worked on it to get it done, and as I said she would pop up sometime and just be there when you were, when you telling just to make sure you were doing what, what should be done. We had a storytelling season that started, what is it, September and it went through the first Friday in May and then the first Friday in May all the storytellers got on the ferry boat and went over to Staten Island [New York] for the storytelling symposium and--each--the chosen storytellers would tell (laugher)--and Augusta said, "And they never let me be one of the chosen storytellers but when I became supervisor of children's work I became a storyteller and I told it." (Laughter) She was so funny, she was very, she was very interesting at that.$Is that the end of the story? Perez falls into the porridge?$$Well if you fall into a pot of hot porridge what?$$You're dead.$$You're dead. Well one of the things we have to help children learn is death is a part of life. I remember once when I was teaching at FAU [Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida] I got a book on--it's called the 'Unbuilding' [David Macaulay] it's the story of the dismantling of the Empire State Building [New York, New York]. It's done by a very wonderful illustrator. So one of colleagues was teaching children's literature that night, and I gave him a copy of the book, I said, "Take this up to your class, it's a wonderful new book and maybe they wanna see it." He took it to his office and in about fifteen minutes he brought it back and he said, "I can't use this book." I said, "Why not?" He says, "It's doesn't have a happy ending, and I don't teach any literature that doesn't have a happy ending." That's not life, when you're working with children you have to give them life and death is a part of life, and it isn't only animals that die, and that's part of what I do. I do it with the teachers that I'm teaching and I do it with the children when I'm working with them and there's some wonderful stories that handle death beautifully for children.$$I saw a quote by you that indicated that you do not as a storyteller preach about the moral of the story or discuss that in anyway. You're simply laying the story out for the listener. Can you talk a little bit about that?$$People underestimate what children understand. You don't need to preach the moral, if the story ends with the moral and you say, "Well when you think about it the best way for this is sometimes is to say no to your very best friends," that's the end of the story. If they're following the story along, you don't need to tell them that. Now if I say to you today, "We're gonna analyze this story in terms of structure and vocabulary," you're going to listen a certain way. If I say to you, "Today is story hour day, we're just gonna share stories. That's what we came to do and you go home with whatever you go home with." With some it may be nothing, with some it's a lot. I remember once years ago I was in a restaurant and this waiter came up to me and said, "You told us stories when we were in elementary school." Here's this guy about six feet tall who remembered something that I told him, so you know you don't have to belabor children with what the moral is, that's, that's my belief anyway as a storyteller.