Books at Bedtime: Stories at the Door
As noted in PaperTigers July calendar, storytelling events are occurring in Canada and in the UK. In Winnipeg where I live, the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture has just announced its writer/storyteller-in-residence, Jan Andrews. Eager to discover what this storyteller had to offer, I went to my local library to find her books.
Stories at the Door (illus. by Francis Blake) is Jan Andrew’s most recent offering. Published in 2007, it is a collection of six stories loosely based on various traditional sources. Andrews has adapted these older tales to wonderful effect, infusing them with humor and wit. My daughter and I enjoyed “Jacinthe Wins Words” which is a funny retelling of a Palestinian Arab folktale called “The Rich Man and the Poor Man.” Two sisters deal with the rather embarrassing situation of breaking wind differently, each with surprising results. This was the first ever story I ever read where a fart was personified (and richly so, may I add, with Francis Blake’s illustrations!).
Another fun tale in the collection is “Jane Saves the Day.” A clever servant girl named Jane helps the miserly rich man she serves by solving the problem of a genie who haunts the man by offering him endless labor for free. If the man runs out of chores for the genie to do, the genie will kill the master. Of course, after the master’s selfish ambitions are served, he has no more work for the genie and must resort to having it improve the lives of his servants (on Jane’s suggestion) before Jane gives the genie the one unsolvable task that will be its undoing. I’ll leave you to find out what that task might be!
Storytelling is truly an art — whether done orally or through the written word. Do you have any storytellers where you live? What kind of stories do they tell?
