Anne pellowski drawing stories from around the world and a sampling of european handkerchief stories 2005

Draw ing Sto ries from Around the World and a Sam pling of European Hand kerchief Sto riesAnne Pellowski Westport, Connecticutl Lon don... Draw ing Sto ries from Around the WorldIn tro d

from Around the World

Drawing Sto ries from Around the World and a Sam pling of Eu ropean Hand kerchief Sto ries

Draw ing Sto ries from Around the World and a Sam pling of European Hand kerchief Sto ries

Anne Pellowski

Westport, Connecticutl Lon don

Copyright © 2005 by Li braries Un limited

All rights re served No por tion of this book may be

reproduced, by any pro cess or tech nique, with out theexpress written con sent of the pub lisher

ISBN: 1-59158-222-9

First pub lished in 2005

Libraries Un limited, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

A Mem ber of the Green wood Pub lishing Group, Inc.www.lu.com

Printed in the United States of Amer ica

The pa per used in this book com plies with the

Permanent Pa per Stan dard is sued by the Na tional

In for ma tion Stan dards Or ga ni za tion (Z39.48–1984)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Con tents

Ac knowl edg ments vii

Ab bre vi a tions ix

Drawing Stories from Around the World 1

In tro duc tion 1

A Note on Draw ing 7

For Those Who Feel They Can not Draw 8

The Black Cat—Nineteenth-Century American 9

The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids—Nineteenth-Century Amer i can, Eu ro pean, Mon go lian 19

The Smart Shop per—Ro ma nian, Greek, Arme nian 25

The Smart Shopper—Swiss 31

What Do You Think You Are?—German, Swiss 37

The Key—Dan ish 43

Per’s Trou sers—Swed ish 49

Light Bulb—Swedish, American 57

How to Get Rid of Mosquitos—Paraguayan 63

Lit tle Cir cle, Big Cir cle—In do ne sian 69

Good Night!—Ma lay sian 75

Right An swer, Wrong An swer—Ma lay sian 81

Right An swer, Wrong An swer (Sec ond Ver sion)—Ma lay sian 84

The Doh Bird—Ben gali 87

How Man and Woman Found Their Place in the World—Chinese 91

The Ab sent-Minded Judge—Korean 95

EKAKI UTA—Jap a nese 98

The Care free Girls 99

Is It Grand father? 103

Shall I Draw Your Portrait? 107

To Help You Feel Better 111

The Oc to pus 115

The One That Got Away 119

The Duck 125

What Hap pened af ter the Rain 129

Panda 135

v

The Cheer leader 139

Ci cada 145

Watch Out! You’ll Turn into a Frog! 149

Cat er pil lar 153

Santa Claus 157

The Badger 163

SAND STORIES—Aus tra lian Ab orig ine 167

The Rain bow Snake—Aus tra lian Ab orig ine 169

Little Boy and Emu—Nunggubuyu (Aus tra lian Ab orig ine)185 The Lit tle Girl and Her Grand mother—Napaskiak, Yuk (Es kimo) 193

What Can Happen If You Fall into a Hole—South Af rica 203

Hand ker chief Sto ries from Eu ro pean Traditions 207

In tro duc tion 207

The Puz zled Pro fes sors—Dutch 211

Rab bit Story—Eu ro pean 213

The Jump ing Mouse—Eu ro pean 219

The Baby Sur prise—Eu ro pean 227

The Peas ant’s Clever Daugh ter—Eu ro pean 233

Sources of the Draw ing Sto ries 243

The Black Cat 243

The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids 243

The Smart Shop per 243

The Smart Shop per—Swiss and Ger man Ver sions 244

What Do You Think You Are? 244

The Key 244

Per’s Trou sers; Light Bulb 244

How to Get Rid of Mosquitos 245

Little Circle, Big Cir cle 245

Good Night!; Right Answer, Wrong An swer 246

The Doh Bird 246

How Man and Woman Found Their Place in the World 246

The Ab sent-Minded Judge 247

Ekaki Uta 247

The Rainbow Snake 247

Little Boy and Emu 248

The Lit tle Girl and Her Grand mother 248

What Can Happen If You Fall into a Hole 248

Sources of the Handkerchief Stories 249

Bib li og ra phy for Draw ing Sto ries 251

Bib li og ra phy for Hand ker chief Sto ries 255

In dex 257

Ac knowl edg ments

My warm est thanks to Shigeo Watanable, Sachiko SaionjiWatanabe, Kiyoko Matsuoka, Tadashi Matsui, and the late KazueIshitake, all of Ja pan They have been su premely helpful in di recting

me to many of my drawing sto ries and giving me good clues so that Icould trans late the sto ries into Eng lish with out distorting them toomuch All er rors of interpretation are mine

Grateful thanks are also due to Devon Harle and RobinYoungerman, ref er ence li brar i ans at the Winona Pub lic Li brary (Min-nesota), for their help in getting items for me on interlibrary loans Ihad first read many of these items at the New York Pub lic Li brary.They were rare and of ten hard to lo cate, but I needed to check themagain firsthand, for the bibliography What other author has had thedelightful mo ment of hearing on the an swering ma chine, “We have

“Hanky Panky” for you at the library”?

I also wish to thank the following, whom I list in alphabetical der, by coun try:

or-Mrs Shpresa Vreto of Albania; the late Jack Da vis and the lateEna Noel and all my IBBY friends in Australia; Angela Evdoxiadis and Ruth Brown of Toronto, Can ada; Knud-Eigil Hauberg-Tychssen ofDen mark; Genevieve Patte of France; the Baumann Family, BarbaraScharioth, Klaus Doderer, and the late Hans Halbey, all of Ger many;Bandana Sen of New Delhi, In dia; Murti Bunanta, Toety Maklis, andIka Sri Mustika of In do ne sia; Nouchine Ansari and all my friends atthe Chil dren’s Book Council of Iran; the staff at the Folklore Section,

Se oul Uni ver sity, Ko rea; Julinda Abu-Nasr of Lebanon; AhmedGhulam Jamaludin, Asmiah Abd Ghani, Hasniah bt Husin, ShamsulKhamariah and all my friends at the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka,Kuala Lumpur, Ma laysia; Joke Thiel-Schoonebeck, Ce cile Beijk vanDaal, and Rian van de Sande of the Neth erlands; Irene Kulman of Par -aguay; Sra Lilly de Cueto of Peru; Kiran Shah, Sheila Wee and mem -bers of the Sto rytelling Group, and mem bers of the Book

De vel op ment Coun cil, Sin ga pore; Eva Eriksson, Ulla Lundberg, and

vii

Per Gustavsson of Swe den; Susanne Stocklin-Meier and the late beth Waldmann of Swit zerland; Somboon Singkamanen of Thailand;Vir ginia Betancourt, Carmen Diana Dearden, and many other friends

Elisa-in Ven ezuela who looked Elisa-in vaElisa-in for drawElisa-ing stories

In the United States: Ginny Moore Kruse, Kathleen Horning, andNancy Gloe of Madison, Wisconsin; Cara Olson Kolb and Sam Kolb ofMinnesota and California (for their help while with the Peace Corps in Par a guay); Mar i lyn Iarusso of New York; Nancy D Munn of Chi cago,

Il li nois; Vic tor Mair, Uni ver sity of Penn syl va nia; and Mar ga ret ReadMacDonald of Seattle, Washington

Ab bre vi a tions

IBBY—The In ternational Board on Books for Young People.This is the or ganization through which I have mademany of my best con tacts in the field of sto rytelling Ithas na tional sec tions in more than sixty countries andhas its secretariat in Basel, Switzerland

USBBY—The U.S Board on Books for Young Peo ple, the of

-fi cial na tional sec tion of IBBY

ix

Draw ing Sto ries from Around the World

In tro duc tion

In us ing the term “draw ing sto ries,” I am re ferring to those stories

in which the teller (or an assistant) actually draws a figure or figureswhile nar rating the story I do not re fer to sto ries in which the fig ures

or pictures are drawn in ad vance, and the teller then points to themwhile narrating

We do not know when draw ing sto ries began There is some ev dence that parts of early cave draw ings match com monly knownmyths and legends in a given area (for ex ample, Australia and south -ern Af rica), but we can only spec ulate whether the draw ings weremade dur ing the tell ing of a tale, or be fore or af ter Most of thesketches in drawing sto ries from the last 150 years are quite ephem -eral, be ing erased or thrown away shortly after the telling oc curs Thismakes them very difficult to research

iI first became in terested in draw ing sto ries (and indeed, any un usual forms of storytelling) as a li brarian and storyteller at the NewYork Public Li brary in the late 1950s and early 1960s This in terest was

-stimulated by Chap ter 38 in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book On the Banks

of Plum Creek and by the appearance of such books as Carl With ers’s The Tale of a Black Cat I also saw how the draw ing-story books and

films of Crockett John son (Harold and the Purple Crayon and oth ers)

had taken hold of the young child’s imag ination in that same pe riod—and for that matter still do

During my first ex tended visit to Ja pan, in 1972, I came upon a

number of children drawing and chanting ekaki uta Thanks to my

guide, Sachiko Saionji (now Watanabe), I was in troduced to this fas nating aspect of Japanese chil dren’s cul ture It is dif ficult to remembernow, but she, the late Mitsue Ishitake (founder of the Ohanashi Car a-van), or the writer Shigeo Watanabe, sent me the first book in which I

ci-1

saw this custom doc umented: Satoshi Kako’s Nihon Densho No Asobi

Tokumon (Jap a nese Tra di tional Games) Later, Tadashi Matsui, of

Fukuinkan Pub lish ers, and Kiyoko Matsuoka, ac tive in the Asian tural Center for UNESCO, called my attention to var ious pub lications

Cul-and re cord ings where ekaki uta were to be found I owe a debt to all of them, be cause ekaki uta, and my first at tempts at us ing them in Eng -

lish, piqued my in terest enough to search for drawing stories in otherparts of the world

The draw ing sto ry tell ing prac ticed by the Aus tra lian Ab orig i nes

is surely among the older forms, since it is mentioned by early vis itors

to the con tinent Also, the pictures found in caves re veal that the mo tifs and se quences de picted show a re markable similarity to the draw-ings used in sto ries told in the past century Sadly, most folklorists andanthropologists seem to re gard this activity as merely a game prac -ticed by children, and only a few of them have given it the se rious andcareful study it deserves

-The mo tifs and de signs used in such sand storytelling are alsoused by many se rious artists, some times us ing ac tual sand on bark orother types of pa per They can also be found in drawings and paint-ings using other art me dia, such as pen and ink, wa tercolor, tempera,oil, and the like The designs have also been used in film But in vir tu-ally all of these cases, little or no men tion is made of the use instorytelling

More scholars have studied the “storyknifing” com mon amongthe Napaskiak, Yup’ik, and other groups in Alaska and the area onboth sides of the Be ring Strait Storyknifing is generally practicedmostly by chil dren and women One of the first toys given to chil dren

in the past was a beautifully carved bone knife (not sharp) used ex sively for this ac tivity These storyknives are now col lectors’ items andcarry a hefty price Now adays, or dinary ta ble knives of metal orplastic are used

clu-As soon as the chil dren are old enough to ver balize simple tives, they draw se quential figures in snow, sand, or mud while telling

narra-a tnarra-ale thnarra-at mnarra-atches the pic tures This is the process cnarra-alled storyknifing.According to all the scholars who have studied this ac tivity, the typi-cal commencement for such a session is for one child to suggest to an-other, “Let’s go storyknifing,” and they troop out to a space wherethere is a fresh layer of snow or a nice smooth area of mud or sand The stories are of the type commonly known as “personal experience” nar-ratives, or they are mod eled on tra ditional folk tales known among thechildren The tell ers often change the details to match their specific life situations Boys generally drop the ac tivity as soon as they rec ognizethat it is not done by adult men, although there are exceptions

The Yukaghir are a rein deer-herding peo ple who live in the Yakutarea that bor ders the Arc tic Ocean One of the customs girls carried outduring communal dances was to take pieces of fresh birch bark and startcarving figures in it with the tip of a sharp knife The onlookers weremade to guess at what the fig ures represented un til all pres ent could ar -rive at a mu tual un derstanding The con tents in variably re lated to ex -pressions of love Only women made these “love letters” as they werecalled For many years, certain scholars considered them an early form of

writing, but John De Francis, in Vis i ble Speech, quite con vinc ingly ar gues

that they were sim ply mne monic de vices It is my opinion that this tom is sim ply an other form of “storyknifing” practiced by a people whomust at one time or an other have been in touch with the Napaskiak,Yup’ik, and similar groups on both sides of the Bering Strait

cus-It is a curious phe nomenon that the art of draw ing se quential tures and tell ing a story is practiced so similarly among such dis parategroups in the South Pa cific and the North Pacific

pic-The Chi nese are also early draw ing sto rytellers pic-There seems to be

no firm evidence as to when and how Chi nese script was in vented, butthere are many leg ends that try to ex plain its or igin One that is wellknown goes some thing like this:

A long time ago, there was a clever Chi nese min ister who was walk ing along one early morn ing, pon dering how he could pass on thewords of the Em peror in such a way that even dis tant sub jects wouldunderstand As he walked along, he saw in the ground the printsmade by var ious birds and an imals He re alized he could “read”those prints and tell ex actly which an imal or bird had passed by, andwhere each was go ing If he could in vent a way of putt ing the Em -peror’s words as se quential marks on some per manent sur face,such as bone or bam boo, he would be able to send these words to all parts of China at the same time He knew the sym bols that had beenused for cen turies on “or acle bones,” an imal bones that were used topredict fu ture events He took some of these an cient sym bols andcombined them with other sym bols, each one rep resenting a syl lable

-or whole w-ord And out of that came the Chi nese way of writ ing

This is not the place to argue historical proofs for dates when se quential writing began Suf fice it to say, it began very early in Sumeria,

-in Egypt, and -in Ch-ina, but only -in the last-named area does thereseem to have de veloped the custom of telling and draw ing sto riesbased on el ements of writ ten char acters This may be ex plained be-cause we only have surviving ev idence for the Chi nese use of sto ry-telling to elucidate ideo grams; there might have been sim ilarsto ry tell ing us ing Egyp tian hieroglyphs and Sumerian picture scripts

In tro duc tion 3

Only a small percentage of Chinese characters in use today aretrue pictographs or ideo graphs Most of the characters are phonetic.Nevertheless, there are enough pic tures of real persons or objects hid -den in the characters, that it is log ical for a parent or teacher (who hasobserved the power of story) to make up a short nar rative and tell itwhile teach ing the child, thus making the shape and placement ofstrokes in the character more memorable.

That this is still the way some Chi nese families teach their chil dren char acters they want them to re member was brought out verystrikingly to me on a visit to the Hillcrest School in To ronto manyyears ago There, I met Jasper and Pippin Hitchcock, twin brotherswho were Chi nese-Canadian They had been taught an ingenious lit-tle story to help them re member the characters of their name aswritten in Chinese

-When Chi nese writ ing went to Ja pan, where it became known as

kanji script, this story-drawing custom ob viously went with it

Al-though Japanese uses its own purely syllabic form of script, the ed

u-cated person must also learn a certain amount of kanji This was often

taught in story form Masahiro Iwai (1987) points out (p 82) that

kanjiwriting songs are still known by teach ers and by a certain per

-centage of adults and children in Ja pan The same is true in Ko rea, as

shown in A Ko rean Night’s En ter tain ment.

It is not surprising, then, that ekaki uta, the pic ture-drawing story

chants, should have de veloped and flourished and become so wide spread among children in Ja pan to day Most of the scholars who have

-written about the ekaki uta have pointed out that while children in the

earlier part of the twen tieth cen tury were ex posed to no more than

forty, now more than one hundred ekaki uta are extant among

Japa-nese chil dren As the main reason for this in crease, Iwai cites the lack

of play space for present-day Jap anese chil dren Performing ekaki uta

requires far less space than sing ing games that de mand a lot of bodymovement in larger, more open space I per sonally at tribute at least apart of their re cent ex tensive de velopment to the new visuality prev a-lent in Jap anese culture (and in many other parts of the world as well)

The use of Western num bers in so many ekaki uta may have

stemmed from an en tirely dif ferent source It is known that draw ing ahuman head us ing only the West ern numbers from zero to nine wascommon in Europe as an en tertainment This oc curred in many con -figurations The custom of drawing a face or head us ing Japanesenumbers and sym bols exists from the Edo pe riod, and it was in the lat -ter years of this pe riod that Ja pan opened to the West It seems logical

to spec ulate that the two “num ber” meth ods of drawing a hu manhead combined and gradually worked their way into the popular

forms of en tertainment, among them, ekaki uta It is my be lief that Jap

-anese chil dren in clude the West ern num bers so frequently in their

ekaki uta be cause they are required to learn both sys tems of writ ing

numbers from early on, and by us ing them in this manner, they learnthem in a memorable way, having fun

There are similar drawing stories among the languages of In dia,often re lying on the let ters of one of their al phabets I know of themonly because of see ing them told by In dians from the various lan-guage ar eas They are ex ceedingly difficult to trans late and adapt, be -cause they rely on knowledge of al phabets that are used only inspecific ar eas of India I could find no studies in folk lore or anthropol-ogy re ferring to such sto ries, so I know of no con nection with otherAsian traditions

The drawing stories found in the In donesian and Malaysian ar eas, on the other hand, all seem to have come from Jap anese or Chi-nese or Eu ropean tra ditions In In donesia, there are mini-storiescreated around human head drawings, using Western numbers.These could have been brought in by the Dutch Ika Sri Mustika of Ja -karta and Nusa Tenggara of East Timor both showed me interestingvariants

European draw ing sto ries can be traced back less than two hun dred years, and, in most cases, seem to have been popular mostly from the mid-nine teenth cen tury to the early twen tieth The re bus has been

-a pop ul-ar device for -a much longer period, but it c-annot be c-alled -adrawing story by my definition, since it usu ally relies on printedwords al ternating with pictures that the reader is ex pected to de ci-pher However, the pop ularity of the rebus, es pecially among newlyliterate pop ulations, surely helped to fos ter the ac ceptance and spread

of draw ing stories, once they appeared on the scene

The same is true of the picture sheets used by mar ket sing ersthroughout Europe The sheets had pictures hand-drawn or printed,and the tell ers hung them up and told, or sung, the tale de picted The

common term used for these tellers was bankelsanger, or bench singer,

because they usually stood on a bench Two con temporary pictures of

such storytellers can be found in my book The World of Sto rytelling (pp.

84–85) Most of these were dramatic sto ries, culled from the sen tional news of the day

sa-An in ter est ing vari ant ap pears in the Kaszubian re gion of Po land,where the picture sheets were used as a means of keep ing alive theKaszubian lan guage during the period when Prussian authorities

were at tempting to stamp it out These sheets were called Kaszubskie

Nuty and can be seen in the Kaszubian Mu seum in Kartuzy, Po land I

know of no ex amples in Amer ican museums or li braries But again,

In tro duc tion 5

these do not fall within my definition of drawing storytelling, be causethe draw ings were made ahead of time, and the teller/singer simplyused a long stick to point at each pic ture as he performed (they werealmost exclusively male performers).

The first men tion of a European draw ing story I have been able tolocate in print is a ver sion of the story of ten called “The Wild Bird” buttitled “The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids” in this collection It can befound in the Frikell book (1872, p 89) un der the title “Do ing a Goose in the Turn of a Hand.” The story given with the figure is a scant fourlines long, but the gen eral outline is there The Frikell book was a pop -ular handbook for magicians, both am ateur and professional

The person most likely responsible for the spread of pop ular, folkdrawing sto ries in Eu rope was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known

as Lewis Carroll, the au thor of Al ice’s Ad ven tures in Won der land He is

known to have used them in en tertaining children and adults Or perhaps

it was Hans Christian Andersen Andersen trav eled widely through outEurope and the British Isles Both he and Carroll were known for their

“trick” en tertainments It is pos sible that one or both shared a drawingstory, and this was passed on when they visited various homes This couldaccount for the fact that sim ilar drawing stories were known in England,the Neth erlands, Den mark, and Swe den dur ing the last de cades of thenineteenth cen tury However, it is just as likely that these were pure inven-tions com ing from the com mon folk and passed quickly from one per son

to an other be cause they were so clever and quirky

But how to ac count for the ap pearance of these same sto ries in theUnited States during the same era? If Laura Ingalls Wilder was correct

in her re membrances, her mother was telling her some of these sto riessome time in the early 1870s Her mem ory is backed up by at least twoother in formants grow ing up in other parts of the United States at thesame time (See notes at the head of “The Black Cat” and “The Wolves,the Goats and the Kids.”)

We shall probably never know ex actly where these drawing sto ries started and how or by whom they were spread But spread theydid, usually by word of mouth and in dividual drawing, but also inprinted picture and text format

-A few of them, such as the one I call “The Smart Shopper” in thiscollection, seem to be found in all parts of Eu rope One can of ten tellwhere the variant co mes from sim ply by not ing what items are pur-chased Oth ers seem to be of more re cent vintage and are found only

in one area (for ex ample, “Per’s Trousers”)

It is curious that those im migrants from Europe who went toSouth and Cen tral America in the nineteenth cen tury did not seem totake the draw ing story with them With the help of many friends and

colleagues in var ious countries of that region, I have searched fordrawing sto ries, but in vain Per haps they did take some drawing sto -ries with them, but most did not sur vive be cause the contexts of thestories were so dif ferent from the daily life around them In the end, Ifound only one tra ditional draw ing story, from Paraguay, given inthis col lection as “How to Get Rid of Mosquitos.”

There have been a num ber of draw ing story books used by teach ers and li brar i ans for de cades (Mar ga ret Oldfield’s books come tomind) I have observed some of these sto ries used skillfully and suc -cessfully in storytelling programs for young children I find it cu rious,however, that I have never come across the sto ries from these booksrepeated and passed on by adults or children in what might be called a folk sto ry tell ing sit u a tion Is there some thing par tic u lar about theones that have survived through live oral and pictorial telling?One an swer might be that the book sto ries are more ge neric andseem to be set in no spe cific place or time But most of those passed onorally (albeit sometimes kept alive by be ing recalled through a printedversion) seem to be quite spe cific in their set ting and of ten give an idea

-of a very def inite time when the story took place If they spread fromplace to place to place, as, for example, the cat story that be gins the col-lection, they pick up just enough vari ation to give the story a to tallylocal flavor

This is the main rea son why I per sonally like to tell these drawingstories, picked up from many sources around the world The cul turalclues are of ten slight or sub tle, but they are there in almost ev ery story.They can provide a connection to another cul tural group, if onlythrough a few moments of shared de light in the sheer fun of the clevermatching of sketch to story

A Note on Draw ing

In each story I have used the cor rect drawing stroke opposite thetext, at the point when one should be say ing those words For exam-ple, in the first story, when one is say ing, “There was once a boynamed Tommy,” one should be drawing the large capital “T.” Whenone is saying “Tommy lived in a house with two rooms,” one should

be add ing the two “rooms” onto the T

It is im portant to prac tice the timing in each of these sto ries Donot let the draw ing get ahead of the words or vice versa Be cause of thenature of Chinese characters and the im portance of do ing them inbeautiful cal ligraphy when pos sible, I strongly urge prac tice of the or -der of the strokes and the use of a brush and ink pad Best of all, find askilled Chinese cal ligrapher to do them for you, if you can

A Note on Draw ing 7

For Those Who Feel They Can not Draw

Although these are of ten called chalk board sto ries, instead ofdrawing them on a blackboard, use a large pa per flip chart on astandup ea sel Photocopy the fi nal figure in each story, blowing it up

as large as possible Trace them on to your large pa per on the flipchart, us ing a very faint pencil that is not vis ible to the audience Make

a short written list of the or der of strokes, and cover each pencil strokewith a broad felt-tipped pen, as you are telling that part of the story.Chances are, no one in your au dience will notice that you are trac ingrather than do ing an original drawing

THE BLACK CAT

Nine teenth-Cen tury Amer i canThis is per haps the most widely known drawing story in the

world, due in part to the fact that Lewis Carroll, the au thor of Al ice’s

Ad ven tures in Won der land, used it as an en tertainment in the

nine-teenth cen tury He was cop ied by many trying to be as clever as he

was But it is likely that it was a folk story Carroll had adapted The

Jour nal of Amer i can Folk lore re ported two versions in 1897 A rhymed

version, with a different cat fig ure and a completely dif ferent text, was written in 1897 by Jane H Holzer, a teacher in Connecticut The il lus-

tra tor Paul Zelinsky used that poem to make his pic ture book The Maid

and the Mouse and the Odd-Shaped House The lon gest ver sion is also in

poetry, but in the Friesian language of the Netherlands Its main acters are two aunts, whose names begin with “T” and “D.” The re -sulting draw ing is different from the one given here It was published

char-in a picture book, Fan Tryntsjemuoi en Duotsjemuoi by Jant

Visser-Bakker and Anneke Buizer-Visser A Dutch version of the same bookwas also published

9

There was once a boy named Tommy.

Here’s a T for Tommy

Tommy’s best friend was Sally, who lived down the road on a dairy farm Here’s an S for Sally.

Tommy lived in a house with two rooms.

In each room there was a win dow.

On the cor ner of each room was a chimney.

The Black Cat 11

In the front of the house was a wee double door.

On both sides of the door step there was grass growing [At this point, try to cover the cat’s head with your non-drawing hand or arm.]

One day, Tommy took an empty pitcher and set off for Sally’s house.

“Do you have some cream?” Tommy asked Sally.

“Yes,” said Sally “We keep it in the cel lar.”

They went down into the cellar,

The Black Cat 13

poured some cream into the pitcher and started to climb the stairs.

Tommy spilled some of the cream on the steps He and Sally slipped on it and tumbled back down the steps.

“Let me carry it,” said Sally She took the pitcher They climbed up the steps and walked along the short path to Tommy’s house.

The Black Cat 15

Suddenly, Sally spilled some cream from the pitcher Tommy and Sally went slid ing down and then they climbed up.

They slid down again and climbed up once more and fi nally made it back to Tommy’s house.

-But too bad! There was the black cat waiting and no cream was left in the pitcher [Lift your hand or arm away from the drawing.]

The Black Cat 17

THE WOLVES, THE GOATS

AND THE KIDS

Mon go lianVersions of the picture in this story have been found in Eu rope, inthe United States, in Africa, and in Asia As men tioned in the In tro-duction to this sec tion, it seems to be the first Eu ropean folk drawingstory that ap peared in print A version that Laura Ingalls Wilderlearned from her mother is fea tured in “The Day of Games,” Chap ter

38 of On the Banks of Plum Creek Isak Dinesen, in her book Out of Af rica,

cites an other ver sion that she told fre quently while liv ing in Af rica It

is likely she learned it dur ing her childhood in Denmark I came uponthat ver sion while do ing storytelling workshops with a group of li -brarians and children’s book writers in Kenya in 1987 In each case thestory that goes with the drawing is dif ferent Here it is set in Mongolia,where ru ral people still live in round yurts, tents made of thick felt

If possible, use an erasable chalk or pencil when telling this Donot worry about mak ing the era sures complete The marks left be hindwill later suggest feath ers If you are us ing a per manent marker, disre-gard the remarks about erasing

19

Once upon a time, in the coun try of Mon golia, there was

an old man and an old woman Like many people in Mongolia, they lived in a round tent, called a yurt.

In the middle of the tent was a hole to let out the smoke from their fire.

Near their tent was a fenced-in pen where they kept their five black goats and three black kids—the baby goats.

Not far from the pen were two bushes Hid den be hind these bushes, two wolves had their den If you walked

by, you could see only their eyes, shin ing in the dark shade of the bushes.

One morn ing, the old man went down to the pen to get the three little black kids He brought them back to the tent (erase the three small black dots) and teth ered them

on ropes at the back of the tent, so they could eat the fresh, new grass that was grow ing there.

The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids 21

The old man then went outside to have a good look around When he saw no sign of dan ger, he went back

in the tent to have a glass of tea.

The mo ment the wolves saw the old man go inside, they ran up to the pen and jumped to the top of the fence.

The five black goats were so frightened at seeing the wolves on the fence, they all jumped over the back gate [Erase five large dots.] Each goat went in a dif ferent di - rection They were all bleat ing and crying.

The old woman heard the commotion She came out of the tent and ran to the pen “Oh, where are our goats?” she cried “I don’t see any of them All I see is a strange bird.”

The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids 23

For pur poses of introducing other countries, you can do versions

of this story as it might be told in ru ral parts of other countries fromaround the world For example, in Masai areas of Kenya, it would becalves penned in, the tents might be long to tourists on sa fari, and soon

THE SMART SHOPPER

Ro ma nian, Greek, Ar me nianThis drawing story has many variations and can be found in allparts of Europe In most of the ver sions I have seen, the figure is awoman, and the items she buys are things to eat, and uten sils withwhich to eat Dan ish and Swedish versions, as indicated in Per

Gustavsson’s won der ful book Ritsagor, usu ally draw a child as the

shopper In some places, as in the Swiss ver sion that follows, the ure is drawn right side up, and the shopper pays sixty-six cents for ev-erything In tell ing ei ther version, it would be ap propriate to put in the name of a lo cal mar ket or convenience store, but be sure to keep the lo -cale of the story in Europe For ex ample, af ter “set off for the lo cal mar -ket,” you could say: “It was a little like in ourneighborhood.” I recently told this story in Ja karta, In donesia, andadapted it to fit things bought for a birthday party for one of the chil-dren in the day-care cen ter where we were having a demonstrationstory hour

fig-25

One day, a Greek woman went out to shop for food for herself and her hus band She took her shop ping bag and set off for the lo cal market.

First, she bought a big pump kin.

Then she bought a smaller melon.

She bought a car rot.

The Smart Shop per 27

Then she bought four po tatoes.

She carefully selected some pea pods and some parsley.

“We need something to eat this with,” she said So she bought two forks.

When she got home she said to her hus band, “Aren’t I a smart shopper! I got all this for ninety-nine cents!” [Turn figure right side up.]

The Smart Shop per 29