I’ve written a few posts about Shakespeare for PaperTigers and have been much enlightened on how the Bard’s work can be transmitted to children.  I was therefore quite happy to be presented with a copy of Shakespeare’s Storybook: Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard by Patrick Ryan and James Mayhew (Barefoot Books, 2001) by my local university’s (University of Manitoba) Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.  Patrick Ryan, co-author of this book, is this year’s Storyteller-in-Residence at the Centre.

Shakespeare’s Storybook tells the tales that were likely the precursors to the stories of his plays.  As is commonly known, Shakespeare did not ‘invent’ the stories of his plays — they often came from various sources which Shakespeare then ‘played’ with in order to create his own version of the story suitable for the stage.

I launched into a reading of Shakespeare’s Storybook as soon as I got it, and played the CD of the first story “The Devil’s Bet”  to my daughter.  She was immediately hooked.  And why shouldn’t she be?  The first story — the precursor to The Taming of the Shrew — was about a nasty girl named Nora who through an encounter with a gentle but spirited husband and through her own wits, manages to reform herself and rid her household of the Nicky Nicky Nye, a pestilent water devil.   Although my daughter condemned Nora’s nastiness, she did perceive rather sagely that the husband, Jamie, was effectively ‘training’ Nora to be a better woman.  Nothing like a wayward character to get a child interested in a story, that’s for sure!

Equally compelling were some of the other stories like “Ashboy” (Hamlet) and “The Hill of Roses” (Romeo and Juliet.)   My daughter, whose first Shakespeare play was Twelfth Night, was a little disappointed that the story behind that play wasn’t in the book, but she did enjoy the others.  We had an entertaining few bedtime nights of listening to the CDs and going through the book together.  If you enjoy Shakespeare, I’d certainly recommend this book  as an engaging introduction to the master playwright’s work.

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?