A foreign assistant teaches you how to tell stories with picture books—“Where the Wild Things Are”

    Friends often ask: How to tell sto­ries using pic­ture books?
   
Should I read accord­ing to the words in the book, or can I express myself freely based on my under­stand­ing and needs?
   
If you only read the words in a book, what should you do if you encounter a pic­ture with no words?
   
When read­ing pic­ture books to chil­dren, do you need to ask ques­tions or com­mu­ni­cate with them in oth­er ways?
   
Should you per­form for your chil­dren with pas­sion, expres­sion, and ges­tures, or should you read qui­et­ly?
   
Should you read the book repeat­ed­ly and pre­pare thor­ough­ly before­hand, or is it bet­ter to enjoy the first read­ing expe­ri­ence with your child?
   
What should you pay atten­tion to if you are fac­ing a group of chil­dren instead of just one or two?
   
When a child inter­rupts and asks a ques­tion while you are telling a sto­ry, should you answer or how should you respond?
   
Is it pos­si­ble to inter­sperse a few com­ments while telling a sto­ry, or invite the audi­ence to dis­cuss it?
   
Before telling a sto­ry, how can you warm up and guide the audi­ence to more eas­i­ly cap­ture their inter­est?
   
After telling the sto­ry, do you need to ask ques­tions, make com­ments, or invite the audi­ence to dis­cuss?
   
…
   
There are actu­al­ly many more ques­tions like this.
 
   
To answer these ques­tions, I invit­ed a for­eign assis­tant to show you the whole process of telling a sto­ry with a pic­ture book. The pic­ture book he used was the Eng­lish ver­sion of Where the Wild Things Are.
The Wild Things Are, the Chi­nese ver­sion of this book has also been pub­lished by Tomor­row Pub­lish­ing House (Chi­nese ver­sion link), I am hon­ored to have been the trans­la­tor of this book.
   
It’s a bit of a shame that my for­eign assis­tant does­n’t speak Chi­nese (even a three-year-old in Chi­na can’t). How­ev­er, he speaks excel­lent Eng­lish, very stan­dard Amer­i­can Eng­lish. Even more remark­able is that he and his wife often tell sto­ries to the chil­dren. They are both very skilled sto­ry­tellers and are very pop­u­lar with the chil­dren. Of course, this does­n’t pre­vent him from engag­ing in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties in his spare time, but I don’t know much about this. What’s more note­wor­thy is that he tru­ly loves the book “Where the Wild Things Are” and once said to his wife, “I am Max, and Max is me.” — To be hon­est, I do look a bit like him. — Per­haps because of this, the author and painter Mr. Sendak signed sev­er­al books spe­cial­ly for him and his daugh­ter.
   
Okay, enough of the small talk. Let my for­eign assis­tant tell the sto­ry first.
 

Oba­ma tells the sto­ry “Where the Wild Things Are” (East­er 2009, White House lawn)
 
   
How’s it going? My for­eign assis­tant is pret­ty good, isn’t he? 
   
There are many things to admire about his sto­ry­telling skills, but I think there are only two basic points:
   
First, when telling a sto­ry with a pic­ture book, he should try to face the audi­ence so that the chil­dren can see the pic­tures as much as pos­si­ble (his wife kept remind­ing him of this, which shows that she is a good wife);
   
Sec­ond, you have to real­ly like the sto­ry you tell.
 
   
When it comes to sto­ry­telling through pic­ture books, Tai­wanese com­pa­tri­ots have been ahead of main­land Chi­na for two or three decades. They have accu­mu­lat­ed a wealth of valu­able expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly the “Lit­tle Big Read­ing Club” mod­el and the “Cater­pil­lar Chil­dren’s Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion,” which are both clear and sys­tem­at­ic. The key points of these two mod­els can be sum­ma­rized as fol­lows.
 
   
☆“Lit­tle Big Read­ing Club” mod­el
   
1. Hold the pic­ture book in hand and let the child appre­ci­ate it, and avoid point­ing with your hands;
   
2. Find a suit­able place to stand and take the audi­ence into full con­sid­er­a­tion;
   
3. Stay true to the work and read the text direct­ly with­out adding any embell­ish­ments. How­ev­er, you may appro­pri­ate­ly enhance the changes in voice by using dif­fer­ent emo­tions and into­na­tions.
   
Fourth, fol­low the prin­ci­ple of “read the words when there are words, and turn the pages qui­et­ly when there are no words” as much as pos­si­ble, and do not inter­rupt the read­ing to add thoughts, com­ments or ques­tions;
   
5. To avoid sim­ply read­ing aloud, you can pre­pare a large num­ber of pic­ture books at the same time, and design and arrange some exten­sion activ­i­ties after read­ing.
 
   
☆“Cater­pil­lar Chil­dren’s Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion” mod­el
    *
The main pur­pose is to inspire chil­dren to: ① be con­cerned about the inter­est­ing or con­fus­ing parts of the sto­ry; ② think and dis­cuss fur­ther, and guide chil­dren to devel­op the habit of ratio­nal think­ing.
    *
“Inter­rup­tion Method” (Col­lab­o­ra­tive Think­ing Method): Be ready to dis­cuss at any time. Books are just a medi­um to lead chil­dren into dia­logue and dis­cus­sion.
    *
Pay atten­tion to the spon­ta­neous ques­tions that chil­dren real­ly care about; lis­ten care­ful­ly to under­stand the real mean­ing; the sto­ry­teller is only a guide, not a stan­dard answer or knowl­edge base.
 
   
Observ­ing the sto­ry­telling style of Mr. Oba­ma, the for­eign assis­tant, from these two per­spec­tives, it is not only seri­ous­ly incon­sis­tent with the “small and big” mod­el, but also has a cer­tain dis­tance from the “cater­pil­lar” mod­el.
   
So how should we tell sto­ries?
   
Haha, my opin­ion is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple:Read it as you like, as you like, as you like. Just read it, just read it…
 

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