First, a confession. If it were socially acceptable, I would play with dolls every day.
Yesterday, I took part in the enormously fun Ask Big Questions “Living Library” event hosted by Virginia Tech and the Blacksburg Library. Each invited presenter represented a job the attendees (preschool and elementary school aged kids) might be interested in learning more about. The llama farmer, who’d brought an actual llama along with her, was tough to compete with, but I still got an enthusiastic crowd of pint-sized storytellers visiting my table.
My exhibit focused on writing and storytelling. Attendees could create their own stories using the characters including a small Barbie, a wizard puppet, a plastic donkey, a squishy frog, a creature made of shells, a Minion doll, and others. I also provided settings in the form of pictures of tropical islands, palaces, dark forests, etc. I’d created some ready-made story prompts, thinking some kids might be stuck for plot ideas, but the kiddos sure didn’t need those! They came up with dozens awesome stories all their own. One little girl even pulled out a purse full of Disney princess dolls and added them to the story. After all, what story couldn’t benefit from a purseful of princesses?
Making up stories with kids is a little like dropping acid or listening to one of this year’s presidential debates. If you just sit back and don’t think too much, the spectacle can be pretty amazing. The stories zigged and zagged in ways I never could’ve predicted. One minute, the wizard character was nice, teaching a class full of wannabe wizards how to fly. Another kid would take over the story and suddenly the wizard would be trapping the plastic donkey in a cave above a secret lagoon, trying to destroy all her kindness with his evil spells.
Here are a few of my favorite story lines:
Not all the kids who attended were able to read and write yet, but those who could were invited to write little mini stories to share with the world via my blog.
Today I am going to a birthday party!
The makings of a great adventure story, for sure. 🙂
It started in China. When I was a little girl when one day I got to go on the plane.
Intriguing, huh? Writing was still pretty new to this little one, but she clearly has a knack for writing a compelling hook.
When I grow up I want to be a zookeeper.
Zoos are great settings for stories. And given how interested this little person was in the animal characters, I’m sure zookeeping is a solid career choice.
One day, I was coming home from school when… OH! I forgot to introduce myself! I’m Shell Dog and I live on a tropical island. Well, back to the story.
I was coming home from school when a dozen six-foot tall Minions, led by Kevin, came up to me wearing bikinis.
“Do you want to go swimming with us?” asked Kevin.
“What the heck.” I said.
Eventually I decided to go swimming with them, and they were super nice. After that, I went swimming with them pretty much every day.
A fun story from one of the slightly older kids, inspired by the characters and settings I’d brought. I didn’t have to correct the punctuation or spelling at all. She even got the hyphen right! An English professor in the making?
Mindy Quigley 