Red Mud Parent-Child Storytelling Arena Strategy Beta 1.0

Book Club Scene——I Like Books
 

Lit­tle Sto­ry­teller — The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar
 
   
In July 2007, Bei­jing Red Mud Book­store began host­ing its first par­ent-child and adult book clubs in a small liv­ing room on the sec­ond floor of the book­store’s main build­ing. (Pre­vi­ous­ly, book clubs had been held in pub­lic venues like libraries.) Due to space lim­i­ta­tions, each Red Mud Book Club could only accom­mo­date a max­i­mum of 20 peo­ple (includ­ing adults and chil­dren). How­ev­er, in this small space, every­one spent many joy­ful hours togeth­er.
 
   
To cel­e­brate the sec­ond anniver­sary of the Red Mud Read­ing Club,A par­ent-child read­ing com­pe­ti­tion will be held on July 18.
 
   
Although it’s a com­pe­ti­tion, in the spir­it of “aim­ing to be involved,” we’ve designed a win­ning rate of no less than 99.99%, so there’s no need to be ner­vous, young or old. I’ve also com­piled a few tips for par­ent-child read­ing or sto­ry­telling at a book club for your ref­er­ence.
 
   
First, let me share a few ideas that the Red Mud Read­ing Club strives to pro­mote. Our under­stand­ing of the ide­al state of read­ing can be sim­ply put: just pick up a book and read it. If we and our chil­dren can pick it up and read it, become absorbed in it, and read with joy, then we have reached a very ide­al state!
 
   
Based on this phi­los­o­phy, Red Mud’s book clubs (pri­mar­i­ly par­ent-child book clubs) aren’t the typ­i­cal sto­ry­telling sessions—the kind where every­one brings their chil­dren to lis­ten to a sto­ry­teller tell a won­der­ful sto­ry. Instead, we strive to invite every par­tic­i­pant (both adults and chil­dren) to share sto­ries: lis­ten­ing and telling sto­ries, and the shar­ing should be as every­day as possible—just like shar­ing sto­ries with fam­i­ly at home every day. There­fore, ide­al­ly, sto­ry­telling does­n’t require any props or elab­o­rate cos­tumes (though of course, unre­strained cre­ativ­i­ty and the need for play­ful play are wel­come). Sim­ply pre­pare for the per­fect sto­ry­telling mood.
 
   
In my mem­o­ry, the most excit­ing moments of the Red Mud Read­ing Club were prob­a­bly like this:
 
   
When a child under three years old heard his moth­er telling the sto­ry of the Plaid Ele­phant, which he was most famil­iar with, he could not help but run to the book and then told the sto­ry again inces­sant­ly. His expres­sion and pos­ture were more like his moth­er than his moth­er, even though he knew almost no words in the book.
 
   
Anoth­er time, a four-year-old girl sat in her father’s arms, lis­ten­ing to him read her favorite sto­ry, “My Dad­dy is John­ny.” Every time her father read the part where the char­ac­ter Gadim spoke, she would say in a par­tic­u­lar­ly child­ish voice, “This is my dad­dy, his name is Johnny!”—She moved every­one present. I have nev­er heard a bet­ter sto­ry­teller than her.
 
   
Anoth­er time, two girls aged nine or ten, after 10 min­utes of col­lab­o­ra­tive prepa­ra­tion, per­formed the sto­ry of “The War­rior and the Drag­on” per­fect­ly for every­one with ease.
 
    …
 
   
These seem­ing­ly sim­plest ways of pre­sen­ta­tion, although only a few min­utes long, allow us to see the long accu­mu­la­tion behind them, and to see the truest, purest, and there­fore most beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship between par­ents and chil­dren. The per­fec­tion of that tac­it under­stand­ing is sim­ply unpar­al­leled.
 
   
It is not dif­fi­cult to achieve this state. You just need to read and live hap­pi­ly with your chil­dren every day.
 
   
But, hon­est­ly, it’s not easy to per­form flaw­less­ly in a group read­ing ses­sion or a some­what nerve-wrack­ing com­pe­ti­tion. After all, fac­ing so many strangers is a com­plete­ly new expe­ri­ence, and younger chil­dren tend to be more nat­ur­al. There­fore, a bit of a “strat­e­gy” is nec­es­sary.
 
   
This strat­e­gy is actu­al­ly just a few sim­ple prin­ci­ples, which are pure­ly based on expe­ri­ence. It is not “uni­ver­sal­ly applic­a­ble” and needs to be used flex­i­bly on the spot.
 
   
Tip 1: Always have a back­up plan! As the mil­i­tary max­im goes, “Before you advance, think about retreat­ing.” No mat­ter how per­fect your plan, a child is always like­ly to back out. If they’re stub­born, even if there are thou­sands of peo­ple around, they’ll retreat! So, to at least have some fun and have some fun at the event, it’s a good idea to have a back­up plan in case your child does­n’t coop­er­ate. For exam­ple, sim­ply hav­ing your child lie in their moth­er or father’s arms while they lis­ten to a sto­ry is a great option.
 
   
Strat­e­gy 2: Don’t force your child to prac­tice or demon­strate their abil­i­ties. For chil­dren, read­ing is a game, and com­pe­ti­tions are even more of a game with­in a game. In this some­what tense game, there’s no need to specif­i­cal­ly encour­age chil­dren to demon­strate their abil­i­ties, such as by show­ing off their pro­fi­cien­cy in read­ing and rec­og­niz­ing words, or by forc­ing them to mem­o­rize infor­ma­tion that oth­ers strug­gle with. Since it’s a game, any­thing unin­ter­est­ing should be omit­ted. If chil­dren become immersed in the game and grad­u­al­ly become more engaged, their abil­i­ties will nat­u­ral­ly emerge, and their poten­tial will be more eas­i­ly stim­u­lat­ed as they become more engaged. For exam­ple, in a ren­di­tion of “The Giv­ing Tree,” if a child tru­ly does­n’t want to read the nar­ra­tion or play the tree or the chil­dren, then play­ing the large rock beneath the tree is fine. I heard that the son of Tai­wanese actress Fang Suzhen became famous for play­ing the rock in the fairy tale “Snow White” (see the pic­ture book “Yay! Fat Rock” for details).
 
   
Strat­e­gy 3: Unlim­it­ed cre­ativ­i­ty and enjoy­ment lie in the process of play­ing. Those who aren’t very good at games assume the fun lies in the moment and pin their enjoy­ment on the out­come. Expe­ri­enced gamers under­stand that while the out­come is mean­ing­ful, it’s actu­al­ly quite lim­it­ed, and the joy begins long before­hand. For exam­ple, the actu­al sto­ry­telling com­pe­ti­tion typ­i­cal­ly only lasts about 10 min­utes, but prepa­ra­tions take days. This prepa­ra­tion process is the most fun! For exam­ple, you can devise sev­er­al sce­nar­ios and rehearse them, each time poten­tial­ly spark­ing new ideas. To have fun, you can devise all sorts of props, even draw­ing and craft­ing, and even tear­ing a cou­ple of sheets if you’re com­plete­ly lost. There­fore, props are gen­er­al­ly used in sto­ry­telling com­pe­ti­tions. Can you guess why? It’s not that these props are essen­tial for sto­ry­telling; it’s sim­ply that dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion process, you’re over­whelmed with cre­ativ­i­ty, cre­at­ing a ton of “junk.” If you don’t use them on the spot, they’ll like­ly end up in the trash! ——So for many play­ers who know how to play, when they get to the scene, it becomes almost just a “rou­tine” because they have already had enough of the most fun part.
 
   
Tip 4: Adapt to the atmos­phere and pre­pare a few sur­pris­es. If, as Tip 3 sug­gests, play­ers are already hav­ing enough fun before they even arrive, that’s a bit of a flaw. A true expert needs to go the extra mile to help chil­dren expe­ri­ence the oth­er side of the fun. This fun, play­ful­ly described as “mak­ing friends through mar­tial arts,” empha­sizes friend­ship. Before you begin, famil­iar­ize your­self with the venue and the oth­er par­tic­i­pants, mak­ing as many friends as possible—big broth­ers and sis­ters, younger broth­ers and sis­ters, uncles and aunts—to build a buzz. For the more cre­ative, you can even pre­pare a sur­prise reveal. Add the fin­ish­ing touch­es at this point. Even if you don’t win a stand­ing ova­tion, at least you’ll have cre­at­ed some­thing new and excit­ing.
 
    …
 
   
There are many oth­er strate­gies like this, but the short of it is: play with a nor­mal mind, relaxed and nat­ur­al. The goal is to make chil­dren feel that read­ing is so fun, just like play­ing at home :)
 
   
Every day is a good day, and every day is a good mood!