I went to the Storytelling Festival on the last day. I arrived in time to go to a presentation at 12:30pm, but
it turned out that none of those scheduled presentations was happening. Or more correctly, none of the professional
were participating at 12:30. I was disappointed. However, I was able to watch the youth storytellers make their
presentations and they were wonderful. They certainly convinced me that storytelling must be a part of every classroom language
arts program. It will be a stretch for me as I have always been overly inhibited about getting up and being dramatic
in front of a bunch of people. However, I will have to find some way to include this.
I was impressed with all the students. The younger ones did as outstanding a job on their
stories for their age groups as the older ones did with theirs. I liked that story about the kid who was constantly
being embarrased by his mom, especially the punch line. The girl who took on the persona of Grace O'Malley, the Pirate
Queen, was incredible. Her accent and costume were perfect. I felt like I was really listening to that pirate
queen in person. The young woman who told the Sir Gawain story could already be a professional storyteller; she was
wonderfulll.
There was also a wonderful book display. I had never before seen many of those titles
and I wish I had had the time to make notes of a number of them for future reference.
