Tricks of the trade: stories and storytelling

When the children were young, we would constantly read aloud to them. I had always been interested in children’s books and children’s book illustrators, so I had a fair collection even before our kids arrived. They were a mix of fairy tales and children’s stories, old and new. Mostly in English, but once the kids came, I bought books in German as well.

 

Before going to bed, I would pick out three books, and Julien and Sara could each choose one for me to read aloud. The logic behind this was to give the bedtime ritual a frame. There was a beginning, taking a bath and brushing their teeth; a middle, which consisted of their antics to delay going to bed; and then the last and best part, the book. Sometimes, very rarely, I would give in and read them one more.

 

I would also take the children to our local library once a week. Even when they were really small, we’d spend an hour or two in the company of books. Julien had a long phase when he would just look at comic books, even though he couldn’t read at the time. Somehow the comics sparked his imagination, and he would go through the stories frame by frame. His vocabulary was not developed enough for him to tell me what he was “reading,” but it was evident that he loved sitting on the bench, surrounded by boxes upon boxes of various comic series, from Tintin to Marvel. He would lose himself in those worlds.

 

We also had this storytelling game we would play once they could speak relatively well. Julien was probably about four years old. Sara, who spoke really early, was probably three when she started playing our story game. The rules were simple.

 

Either Julien or Sara would choose a random word, such as tiger, puddle, or yellow T-shirt. I would then start the story with, “Once upon a time...” I would set up the scene or the characters, maybe five or six sentences, and then, in the middle of a sentence, I would stop with an “...and then...” and clap my hands loudly. This meant one of them had to continue the story where I had left off. They would say a few sentences before clapping and passing it on.

 

The beauty of this game was that I could bring into the story those aspects that held the storyline together. The kids could let their imaginations go wild, and then I would weave everything together. I loved it when our stories got scary or silly. Sara had no wish to take the scary stories any further. If a big tiger was standing at the door, she would inevitably say it was a friendly tiger that liked to play.

 

In the end, though, our children’s primary school teacher (yes, they both had the same one) told us that the most important influence in helping children to love reading later in life was whether they saw their parents reading as well. Giui and I always read throughout the day or in the evening, but we also had a Sunday breakfast ritual where we were all allowed to read at the table.

 

Our friend Claudia would arrive with fresh bread rolls, and after the fury of gulping down the first bites, we would settle into our books. Or the kids would colour or draw if they did not want to read. Classical music played in the background.

 

Those Sunday morning reading breakfasts were as close to domestic bliss as it ever got.