Stories to Tell to Children

Concerning the fundamental points of method in telling a story, I have little to add to the principles which I have already stated as necessary, in my opinion, in the book of which this is, in a way, the continuation. But in the two years which have passed since that book was written, I have had the happiness of working on stories and the telling of them, among teachers and students all over this country, and in that experience certain secondary points of method have come to seem more important, or at least more in need of emphasis, than they did before. As so often happens, I had assumed that “those things are taken for granted; ” whereas, to the beginner or the teacher not naturally a story-teller, the secondary or implied technique is often of greater difficulty than the mastery of underlying principles. The few suggestions which follow are of this practical, obvious kind.