Be sure your voice reaches the farthest child in the room. You need not use a loud tone, but a little difference in the pitch will make a great difference in the carrying quality. If the children must exert themselves, hold themselves tense, in order to hear, they will soon relax the effort and become restless and indifferent.
If a child becomes inattentive, address your story to him for a time, and turn to him frequently afterward. Each child loves to feel that the story is being told to him. For this reason, the story and the children are the only things to be taken account of. The story should be told directly to the individual children, not to the mass of children.
At a recent story hour the children were grouped upon the left hand side of the large audience room, and the older people, of whom there were a goodly number, upon the right hand side. A small cousin of the story-teller—aged three—who had heard the stories until he could tell them himself, sat upon his grandfather’s lap on the “grown-up” side of the room.
The story-teller devoted her attention to the children’s side of the room exclusively. She began with the story of “Raggylug,” by Ernest Thompson-Seton. The moment the story was finished, a small voice from the neglected side of the room demanded, “Now tell it to me!”
The incident is used to show that each child wants to feel that the story is being told to him, and emphasizes the need of telling stories with a personal directness of appeal.
I have said that the story and the children should be the only things of which the story-teller takes note. A consciousness of one’s own self as the actor upon the boards, spoils all.
This self-consciousness may be betrayed by a nervous twirling of a handkerchief, a twisting of rings or bracelet, by an arranging of the hair or the dress. It may be but a slight action in itself, but it betrays the fault which will be felt, though probably not defined.
Forget yourself. Become so interested in your story that you can think of nothing else—except the children who are drinking it in.
You may safely use as much dramatic action as springs spontaneously from a vivid telling of the story, but it must never be a conscious effort for dramatic effect. Give yourself perfect liberty. As you watch your audience, interpolate, enlarge, omit, explain briefly, as you see the need arise—but you can only do this if you know your story. The changes made should all be kept in harmony with the style of the original narrative, and used only in order to stimulate or to arouse your hearers to a quicker perception or a better understanding.
Take time to bring out the essence of the tale, to impress the beauty of the description, to enhance the humor of a situation. A story should never be hurriedly told, any more than it should be hurriedly prepared.