Anne Pellowski Drawing Stories from around the World and a Sampling of European Handkerchief Stories 2005
Drawing Stories
from Around the World
and a Sampling
of European
Handkerchief Stories
Anne Pellowski
LIBRARIES UNLIMITED
Drawing Sto ries from Around the World
and a Sam pling of Eu ropean Hand kerchief Sto ries
Draw ing Sto ries
from Around the World
and a Sam pling of European
Hand kerchief Sto ries
Anne Pellowski
Westport, Connecticut
l
Lon don
Brit ish Li brary Cat a logu ing in Pub li ca tion Data is avail able.
Copyright © 2005 by Li braries Un limited All rights re served. No por tion of this book may be reproduced, by any pro cess or tech nique, with out the express written con sent of the pub lisher.ISBN: 1-59158-222-9 First pub lished in 2005
Libraries Un limited, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
A Mem ber of the Green wood Pub lishing Group, Inc. www.lu.com Printed in the United States of Amer ica The pa per used in this book com plies with the Permanent Pa per Stan dard is sued by the Na tional In for ma tion Stan dards Or ga ni za tion (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Con tents
Ac knowl edg ments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Ab bre vi a tions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Drawing Stories from Around the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 In tro duc tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Note on Draw ing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 For Those Who Feel They Can not Draw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Black Cat—Nineteenth-Century American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids—Nineteenth-Century
Amer i can, Eu ro pean, Mon go lian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Smart Shop per—Ro ma nian, Greek, Arme nian . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Smart Shopper—Swiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 What Do You Think You Are?—German, Swiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 The Key—Dan ish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Per’s Trou sers—Swed ish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Light Bulb—Swedish, American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 How to Get Rid of Mosquitos—Paraguayan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Lit tle Cir cle, Big Cir cle—In do ne sian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Good Night!—Ma lay sian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Right An swer, Wrong An swer—Ma lay sian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Right An swer, Wrong An swer (Sec ond Ver sion)—Ma lay sian . . . . 84 The Doh Bird—Ben gali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 How Man and Woman Found Their Place in the
World—Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The Ab sent-Minded Judge—Korean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
EKAKI UTA—Jap a nese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
The Care free Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Is It Grand father? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Shall I Draw Your Portrait? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 To Help You Feel Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 The Oc to pus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 The One That Got Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 The Duck. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 What Hap pened af ter the Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Panda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
vi Con tents
The Cheer leader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Ci cada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Watch Out! You’ll Turn into a Frog!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Cat er pil lar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Santa Claus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 The Badger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
SAND STORIES—Aus tra lian Ab orig ine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
The Rain bow Snake—Aus tra lian Ab orig ine . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Little Boy and Emu—Nunggubuyu (Aus tra lian Ab orig ine)185
The Lit tle Girl and Her Grand mother—Napaskiak, Yuk (Es kimo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
What Can Happen If You Fall into a Hole—South Af rica . . . . . 203 Hand ker chief Sto ries from Eu ro pean Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
In tro duc tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The Puz zled Pro fes sors—Dutch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Rab bit Story—Eu ro pean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 The Jump ing Mouse—Eu ro pean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 The Baby Sur prise—Eu ro pean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 The Peas ant’s Clever Daugh ter—Eu ro pean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Sources of the Draw ing Sto ries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Black Cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Smart Shop per . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Smart Shop per—Swiss and Ger man Ver sions . . . . . 244 What Do You Think You Are?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 The Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Per’s Trou sers; Light Bulb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 How to Get Rid of Mosquitos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Little Circle, Big Cir cle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Good Night!; Right Answer, Wrong An swer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 The Doh Bird. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 How Man and Woman Found Their Place in the World . . . 246 The Ab sent-Minded Judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Ekaki Uta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
The Rainbow Snake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Little Boy and Emu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 The Lit tle Girl and Her Grand mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 What Can Happen If You Fall into a Hole. . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Sources of the Handkerchief Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Bib li og ra phy for Draw ing Sto ries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Bib li og ra phy for Hand ker chief Sto ries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 In dex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Ac knowl edg ments
My warm est thanks to Shigeo Watanable, Sachiko Saionji Watanabe, Kiyoko Matsuoka, Tadashi Matsui, and the late Kazue Ishitake, all of Ja pan. They have been su premely helpful in di recting me to many of my drawing sto ries and giving me good clues so that I could trans late the sto ries into Eng lish with out distorting them too much. All er rors of interpretation are mine.
Grateful thanks are also due to Devon Harle and Robin Youngerman, ref er ence li brar i ans at the Winona Pub lic Li brary (Min- nesota), for their help in getting items for me on interlibrary loans. I had first read many of these items at the New York Pub lic Li brary. They were rare and of ten hard to lo cate, but I needed to check them again firsthand, for the bibliography. What other author has had the delightful mo ment of hearing on the an swering ma chine, “We have “Hanky Panky” for you at the library”?
I also wish to thank the following, whom I list in alphabetical or- der, by coun try: Mrs. Shpresa Vreto of Albania; the late Jack Da vis and the late
Ena Noel and all my IBBY friends in Australia; Angela Evdoxiadis and Ruth Brown of Toronto, Can ada; Knud-Eigil Hauberg-Tychssen of Den mark; Genevieve Patte of France; the Baumann Family, Barbara Scharioth, Klaus Doderer, and the late Hans Halbey, all of Ger many; Bandana Sen of New Delhi, In dia; Murti Bunanta, Toety Maklis, and Ika Sri Mustika of In do ne sia; Nouchine Ansari and all my friends at the Chil dren’s Book Council of Iran; the staff at the Folklore Section, Se oul Uni ver sity, Ko rea; Julinda Abu-Nasr of Lebanon; Ahmed Ghulam Jamaludin, Asmiah Abd. Ghani, Hasniah bt. Husin, Shamsul Khamariah and all my friends at the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur, Ma laysia; Joke Thiel-Schoonebeck, Ce cile Beijk van Daal, and Rian van de Sande of the Neth erlands; Irene Kulman of Par - aguay; Sra. Lilly de Cueto of Peru; Kiran Shah, Sheila Wee and mem - bers of the Sto rytelling Group, and mem bers of the Book De vel op ment Coun cil, Sin ga pore; Eva Eriksson, Ulla Lundberg, and
viii Ac knowl edg ments
Per Gustavsson of Swe den; Susanne Stocklin-Meier and the late Elisa- beth Waldmann of Swit zerland; Somboon Singkamanen of Thailand; Vir ginia Betancourt, Carmen Diana Dearden, and many other friends in Ven ezuela who looked in vain for drawing stories.
In the United States: Ginny Moore Kruse, Kathleen Horning, and Nancy Gloe of Madison, Wisconsin; Cara Olson Kolb and Sam Kolb of Minnesota and California (for their help while with the Peace Corps in Par a guay); Mar i lyn Iarusso of New York; Nancy D. Munn of Chi cago, Il li nois; Vic tor Mair, Uni ver sity of Penn syl va nia; and Mar ga ret Read MacDonald of Seattle, Washington.
Ab bre vi a tions
IBBY— The In ternational Board on Books for Young People.
This is the or ganization through which I have made many of my best con tacts in the field of sto rytelling. It has na tional sec tions in more than sixty countries and has its secretariat in Basel, Switzerland.
USBBY— The U.S. Board on Books for Young Peo ple, the of -
fi cial na tional sec tion of IBBY.Draw ing Sto ries from
Around the World
In tro duc tion
In us ing the term “draw ing sto ries,” I am re ferring to those stories in which the teller (or an assistant) actually draws a figure or figures while nar rating the story. I do not re fer to sto ries in which the fig ures or pictures are drawn in ad vance, and the teller then points to them while narrating.
We do not know when draw ing sto ries began. There is some ev i- dence that parts of early cave draw ings match com monly known myths and legends in a given area (for ex ample, Australia and south - ern Af rica), but we can only spec ulate whether the draw ings were made dur ing the tell ing of a tale, or be fore or af ter. Most of the sketches in drawing sto ries from the last 150 years are quite ephem - eral, be ing erased or thrown away shortly after the telling oc curs. This makes them very difficult to research.
I first became in terested in draw ing sto ries (and indeed, any un - usual forms of storytelling) as a li brarian and storyteller at the New York Public Li brary in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This in terest was stimulated by Chap ter 38 in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book On the Banks
of Plum Creek and by the appearance of such books as Carl With ers’s
The Tale of a Black Cat. I also saw how the draw ing-story books and
films of Crockett John son (Harold and the Purple Crayon and oth ers) had taken hold of the young child’s imag ination in that same pe riod— and for that matter still do.
During my first ex tended visit to Ja pan, in 1972, I came upon a number of children drawing and chanting ekaki uta. Thanks to my guide, Sachiko Saionji (now Watanabe), I was in troduced to this fas ci- nating aspect of Japanese chil dren’s cul ture. It is dif ficult to remember now, but she, the late Mitsue Ishitake (founder of the Ohanashi Car a- van), or the writer Shigeo Watanabe, sent me the first book in which I
2 Drawing Sto ries from Around the World
saw this custom doc umented: Satoshi Kako’s Nihon Densho No Asobi
Tokumon (Jap a nese Tra di tional Games). Later, Tadashi Matsui, of
Fukuinkan Pub lish ers, and Kiyoko Matsuoka, ac tive in the Asian Cul- tural Center for UNESCO, called my attention to var ious pub lications and re cord ings where ekaki uta were to be found. I owe a debt to all of them, be cause ekaki uta, and my first at tempts at us ing them in Eng - lish, piqued my in terest enough to search for drawing stories in other parts of the world.
The draw ing sto ry tell ing prac ticed by the Aus tra lian Ab orig i nes is surely among the older forms, since it is mentioned by early vis itors to the con tinent. Also, the pictures found in caves re veal that the mo - tifs and se quences de picted show a re markable similarity to the draw- ings used in sto ries told in the past century. Sadly, most folklorists and anthropologists seem to re gard this activity as merely a game prac - ticed by children, and only a few of them have given it the se rious and careful study it deserves.
The mo tifs and de signs used in such sand storytelling are also used by many se rious artists, some times us ing ac tual sand on bark or other types of pa per. They can also be found in drawings and paint- ings using other art me dia, such as pen and ink, wa tercolor, tempera, oil, and the like. The designs have also been used in film. But in vir tu- ally all of these cases, little or no men tion is made of the use in storytelling.
More scholars have studied the “storyknifing” com mon among the Napaskiak, Yup’ik, and other groups in Alaska and the area on both sides of the Be ring Strait. Storyknifing is generally practiced mostly by chil dren and women. One of the first toys given to chil dren in the past was a beautifully carved bone knife (not sharp) used ex clu- sively for this ac tivity. These storyknives are now col lectors’ items and carry a hefty price. Now adays, or dinary ta ble knives of metal or plastic are used.
As soon as the chil dren are old enough to ver balize simple narra- tives, they draw se quential figures in snow, sand, or mud while telling a tale that matches the pic tures. This is the process called storyknifing. According to all the scholars who have studied this ac tivity, the typi- cal commencement for such a session is for one child to suggest to an- other, “Let’s go storyknifing,” and they troop out to a space where there is a fresh layer of snow or a nice smooth area of mud or sand. The stories are of the type commonly known as “personal experience” nar- ratives, or they are mod eled on tra ditional folk tales known among the children. The tell ers often change the details to match their specific life situations. Boys generally drop the ac tivity as soon as they rec ognize that it is not done by adult men, although there are exceptions.
In tro duc tion 3
The Yukaghir are a rein deer-herding peo ple who live in the Yakut area that bor ders the Arc tic Ocean. One of the customs girls carried out during communal dances was to take pieces of fresh birch bark and start carving figures in it with the tip of a sharp knife. The onlookers were made to guess at what the fig ures represented un til all pres ent could ar - rive at a mu tual un derstanding. The con tents in variably re lated to ex - pressions of love. Only women made these “love letters” as they were called. For many years, certain scholars considered them an early form of writing, but John De Francis, in Vis i ble Speech, quite con vinc ingly ar gues that they were sim ply mne monic de vices. It is my opinion that this cus- tom is sim ply an other form of “storyknifing” practiced by a people who must at one time or an other have been in touch with the Napaskiak, Yup’ik, and similar groups on both sides of the Bering Strait.
It is a curious phe nomenon that the art of draw ing se quential pic- tures and tell ing a story is practiced so similarly among such dis parate groups in the South Pa cific and the North Pacific.
The Chi nese are also early draw ing sto rytellers. There seems to be no firm evidence as to when and how Chi nese script was in vented, but there are many leg ends that try to ex plain its or igin. One that is well known goes some thing like this:
A long time ago, there was a clever Chi nese min ister who was walk -
ing along one early morn ing, pon dering how he could pass on the
words of the Em peror in such a way that even dis tant sub jects would
understand. As he walked along, he saw in the ground the prints
made by var ious birds and an imals. He re alized he could “read”
those prints and tell ex actly which an imal or bird had passed by, and
where each was go ing. If he could in vent a way of putt ing the Em -
peror’s words as se quential marks on some per manent sur face,
such as bone or bam boo, he would be able to send these words to all
parts of China at the same time. He knew the sym bols that had been
used for cen turies on “or acle bones,” an imal bones that were used to
predict fu ture events. He took some of these an cient sym bols and
combined them with other sym bols, each one rep resenting a syl lable
or whole word. And out of that came the Chi nese way of writ ing.This is not the place to argue historical proofs for dates when se - quential writing began. Suf fice it to say, it began very early in Sumeria, in Egypt, and in China, but only in the last-named area does there seem to have de veloped the custom of telling and draw ing sto ries based on el ements of writ ten char acters. This may be ex plained be- cause we only have surviving ev idence for the Chi nese use of sto ry- telling to elucidate ideo grams; there might have been sim ilar sto ry tell ing us ing Egyp tian hieroglyphs and Sumerian picture scripts.
4 Drawing Sto ries from Around the World
Only a small percentage of Chinese characters in use today are true pictographs or ideo graphs. Most of the characters are phonetic. Nevertheless, there are enough pic tures of real persons or objects hid - den in the characters, that it is log ical for a parent or teacher (who has observed the power of story) to make up a short nar rative and tell it while teach ing the child, thus making the shape and placement of strokes in the character more memorable.
That this is still the way some Chi nese families teach their chil - dren char acters they want them to re member was brought out very strikingly to me on a visit to the Hillcrest School in To ronto many years ago. There, I met Jasper and Pippin Hitchcock, twin brothers who were Chi nese-Canadian. They had been taught an ingenious lit- tle story to help them re member the characters of their name as written in Chinese.
When Chi nese writ ing went to Ja pan, where it became known as
kanji script, this story-drawing custom ob viously went with it. Al-
though Japanese uses its own purely syllabic form of script, the ed u- cated person must also learn a certain amount of kanji. This was often taught in story form. Masahiro Iwai (1987) points out (p. 82) that
kanji-writing songs are still known by teach ers and by a certain per -
centage of adults and children in Ja pan. The same is true in Ko rea, as shown in A Ko rean Night’s En ter tain ment.
It is not surprising, then, that ekaki uta, the pic ture-drawing story chants, should have de veloped and flourished and become so wide - spread among children in Ja pan to day. Most of the scholars who have written about the ekaki uta have pointed out that while children in the earlier part of the twen tieth cen tury were ex posed to no more than forty, now more than one hundred ekaki uta are extant among Japa- nese chil dren. As the main reason for this in crease, Iwai cites the lack of play space for present-day Jap anese chil dren. Performing ekaki uta requires far less space than sing ing games that de mand a lot of body movement in larger, more open space. I per sonally at tribute at least a part of their re cent ex tensive de velopment to the new visuality prev a- lent in Jap anese culture (and in many other parts of the world as well).
The use of Western num bers in so many ekaki uta may have stemmed from an en tirely dif ferent source. It is known that draw ing a human head us ing only the West ern numbers from zero to nine was common in Europe as an en tertainment. This oc curred in many con - figurations. The custom of drawing a face or head us ing Japanese numbers and sym bols exists from the Edo pe riod, and it was in the lat - ter years of this pe riod that Ja pan opened to the West. It seems logical to spec ulate that the two “num ber” meth ods of drawing a hu man head combined and gradually worked their way into the popular
In tro duc tion 5
forms of en tertainment, among them, ekaki uta. It is my be lief that Jap - anese chil dren in clude the West ern num bers so frequently in their
ekaki uta be cause they are required to learn both sys tems of writ ing
numbers from early on, and by us ing them in this manner, they learn them in a memorable way, having fun.
There are similar drawing stories among the languages of In dia, often re lying on the let ters of one of their al phabets. I know of them only because of see ing them told by In dians from the various lan- guage ar eas. They are ex ceedingly difficult to trans late and adapt, be - cause they rely on knowledge of al phabets that are used only in specific ar eas of India. I could find no studies in folk lore or anthropol- ogy re ferring to such sto ries, so I know of no con nection with other Asian traditions.
The drawing stories found in the In donesian and Malaysian ar - eas, on the other hand, all seem to have come from Jap anese or Chi- nese or Eu ropean tra ditions. In In donesia, there are mini-stories created around human head drawings, using Western numbers. These could have been brought in by the Dutch. Ika Sri Mustika of Ja - karta and Nusa Tenggara of East Timor both showed me interesting variants.
European draw ing sto ries can be traced back less than two hun - dred years, and, in most cases, seem to have been popular mostly from the mid-nine teenth cen tury to the early twen tieth. The re bus has been a pop ular device for a much longer period, but it cannot be called a drawing story by my definition, since it usu ally relies on printed words al ternating with pictures that the reader is ex pected to de ci- pher. However, the pop ularity of the rebus, es pecially among newly literate pop ulations, surely helped to fos ter the ac ceptance and spread of draw ing stories, once they appeared on the scene.
The same is true of the picture sheets used by mar ket sing ers throughout Europe. The sheets had pictures hand-drawn or printed, and the tell ers hung them up and told, or sung, the tale de picted. The common term used for these tellers was bankelsanger, or bench singer, because they usually stood on a bench. Two con temporary pictures of such storytellers can be found in my book The World of Sto rytelling (pp. 84–85). Most of these were dramatic sto ries, culled from the sen sa- tional news of the day.
An in ter est ing vari ant ap pears in the Kaszubian re gion of Po land, where the picture sheets were used as a means of keep ing alive the Kaszubian lan guage during the period when Prussian authorities were at tempting to stamp it out. These sheets were called Kaszubskie
Nuty and can be seen in the Kaszubian Mu seum in Kartuzy, Po land. I
know of no ex amples in Amer ican museums or li braries. But again,
6 Drawing Sto ries from Around the World
these do not fall within my definition of drawing storytelling, be cause the draw ings were made ahead of time, and the teller/singer simply used a long stick to point at each pic ture as he performed (they were almost exclusively male performers).
The first men tion of a European draw ing story I have been able to locate in print is a ver sion of the story of ten called “The Wild Bird” but titled “The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids” in this collection. It can be found in the Frikell book (1872, p. 89) un der the title “Do ing a Goose in the Turn of a Hand.” The story given with the figure is a scant four lines long, but the gen eral outline is there. The Frikell book was a pop - ular handbook for magicians, both am ateur and professional.
The person most likely responsible for the spread of pop ular, folk drawing sto ries in Eu rope was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the au thor of Al ice’s Ad ven tures in Won der land. He is known to have used them in en tertaining children and adults. Or perhaps it was Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen trav eled widely through out Europe and the British Isles. Both he and Carroll were known for their “trick” en tertainments. It is pos sible that one or both shared a drawing story, and this was passed on when they visited various homes. This could account for the fact that sim ilar drawing stories were known in England, the Neth erlands, Den mark, and Swe den dur ing the last de cades of the nineteenth cen tury. However, it is just as likely that these were pure inven- tions com ing from the com mon folk and passed quickly from one per son to an other be cause they were so clever and quirky.
But how to ac count for the ap pearance of these same sto ries in the United States during the same era? If Laura Ingalls Wilder was correct in her re membrances, her mother was telling her some of these sto ries some time in the early 1870s. Her mem ory is backed up by at least two other in formants grow ing up in other parts of the United States at the same time. (See notes at the head of “The Black Cat” and “The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids.”)
We shall probably never know ex actly where these drawing sto - ries started and how or by whom they were spread. But spread they did, usually by word of mouth and in dividual drawing, but also in printed picture and text format.
A few of them, such as the one I call “The Smart Shopper” in this collection, seem to be found in all parts of Eu rope. One can of ten tell where the variant co mes from sim ply by not ing what items are pur- chased. Oth ers seem to be of more re cent vintage and are found only in one area (for ex ample, “Per’s Trousers”).
It is curious that those im migrants from Europe who went to South and Cen tral America in the nineteenth cen tury did not seem to take the draw ing story with them. With the help of many friends and
A Note on Draw ing 7
colleagues in var ious countries of that region, I have searched for drawing sto ries, but in vain. Per haps they did take some drawing sto - ries with them, but most did not sur vive be cause the contexts of the stories were so dif ferent from the daily life around them. In the end, I found only one tra ditional draw ing story, from Paraguay, given in this col lection as “How to Get Rid of Mosquitos.”
There have been a num ber of draw ing story books used by teach - ers and li brar i ans for de cades (Mar ga ret Oldfield’s books come to mind). I have observed some of these sto ries used skillfully and suc - cessfully in storytelling programs for young children. I find it cu rious, however, that I have never come across the sto ries from these books repeated and passed on by adults or children in what might be called a folk sto ry tell ing sit u a tion. Is there some thing par tic u lar about the ones that have survived through live oral and pictorial telling?
One an swer might be that the book sto ries are more ge neric and seem to be set in no spe cific place or time. But most of those passed on orally (albeit sometimes kept alive by be ing recalled through a printed version) seem to be quite spe cific in their set ting and of ten give an idea of a very def inite time when the story took place. If they spread from place to place to place, as, for example, the cat story that be gins the col- lection, they pick up just enough vari ation to give the story a to tally local flavor.
This is the main rea son why I per sonally like to tell these drawing stories, picked up from many sources around the world. The cul tural clues are of ten slight or sub tle, but they are there in almost ev ery story. They can provide a connection to another cul tural group, if only through a few moments of shared de light in the sheer fun of the clever matching of sketch to story.
A Note on Draw ing
In each story I have used the cor rect drawing stroke opposite the text, at the point when one should be say ing those words. For exam- ple, in the first story, when one is say ing, “There was once a boy named Tommy,” one should be drawing the large capital “T.” When one is saying “Tommy lived in a house with two rooms,” one should be add ing the two “rooms” onto the T.
It is im portant to prac tice the timing in each of these sto ries. Do not let the draw ing get ahead of the words or vice versa. Be cause of the nature of Chinese characters and the im portance of do ing them in beautiful cal ligraphy when pos sible, I strongly urge prac tice of the or - der of the strokes and the use of a brush and ink pad. Best of all, find a skilled Chinese cal ligrapher to do them for you, if you can.
8 Drawing Sto ries from Around the World
For Those Who Feel They Can not Draw
Although these are of ten called chalk board sto ries, instead of drawing them on a blackboard, use a large pa per flip chart on a standup ea sel. Photocopy the fi nal figure in each story, blowing it up as large as possible. Trace them on to your large pa per on the flip chart, us ing a very faint pencil that is not vis ible to the audience. Make a short written list of the or der of strokes, and cover each pencil stroke with a broad felt-tipped pen, as you are telling that part of the story. Chances are, no one in your au dience will notice that you are trac ing rather than do ing an original drawing.
THE BLACK CAT
Nine teenth-Cen tury Amer i can This is per haps the most widely known drawing story in the world, due in part to the fact that Lewis Carroll, the au thor of Al ice’s
Ad ven tures in Won der land, used it as an en tertainment in the nine-
teenth cen tury. He was cop ied by many trying to be as clever as he was. But it is likely that it was a folk story Carroll had adapted. The
Jour nal of Amer i can Folk lore re ported two versions in 1897. A rhymed
version, with a different cat fig ure and a completely dif ferent text, was written in 1897 by Jane H. Holzer, a teacher in Connecticut. The il lus- tra tor Paul Zelinsky used that poem to make his pic ture book The Maid
and the Mouse and the Odd-Shaped House. The lon gest ver sion is also in
poetry, but in the Friesian language of the Netherlands. Its main char- acters are two aunts, whose names begin with “T” and “D.” The re - sulting draw ing is different from the one given here. It was published in a picture book, Fan Tryntsjemuoi en Duotsjemuoi by Jant Visser- Bakker and Anneke Buizer-Visser. A Dutch version of the same book was also published.
10 The Black Cat
There was once a boy named Tommy.
Here’s a T for Tommy.
Tommy’s best friend was Sally, who lived down the road on a dairy farm. Here’s an S for Sally.
Tommy lived in a house with two rooms.
In each room there was a win dow.
On the cor ner of each room was a chimney.
The Black Cat 11
12 The Black Cat
In the front of the house was a wee double door.
On both sides of the door step there was grass growing.
[At this point, try to cover the cat’s head with your
non-drawing hand or arm.] One day, Tommy took an empty pitcher and set off for Sally’s house.
“Do you have some cream?” Tommy asked Sally.
“Yes,” said Sally. “We keep it in the cel lar.” They went down into the cellar,The Black Cat 13
14 The Black Cat
poured some cream into the pitcher and started to climb the stairs.
Tommy spilled some of the cream on the steps. He and
Sally slipped on it and tumbled back down the steps.
“Let me carry it,” said Sally. She took the pitcher. They climbed up the steps and walked along the short path to Tommy’s house.
The Black Cat 15
16 The Black Cat
Suddenly, Sally spilled some cream from the pitcher.
Tommy and Sally went slid ing down and then they
climbed up.They slid down again and climbed up once more and fi - nally made it back to Tommy’s house.
But too bad! There was the black cat waiting and no
cream was left in the pitcher. [Lift your hand or arm
away from the drawing.]The Black Cat 17
THE WOLVES, THE GOATS
AND THE KIDS
Mon go lian Versions of the picture in this story have been found in Eu rope, in the United States, in Africa, and in Asia. As men tioned in the In tro- duction to this sec tion, it seems to be the first Eu ropean folk drawing story that ap peared in print. A version that Laura Ingalls Wilder learned from her mother is fea tured in “The Day of Games,” Chap ter 38 of On the Banks of Plum Creek. Isak Dinesen, in her book Out of Af rica, cites an other ver sion that she told fre quently while liv ing in Af rica. It is likely she learned it dur ing her childhood in Denmark. I came upon that ver sion while do ing storytelling workshops with a group of li - brarians and children’s book writers in Kenya in 1987. In each case the story that goes with the drawing is dif ferent. Here it is set in Mongolia, where ru ral people still live in round yurts, tents made of thick felt.
If possible, use an erasable chalk or pencil when telling this. Do not worry about mak ing the era sures complete. The marks left be hind will later suggest feath ers. If you are us ing a per manent marker, disre- gard the remarks about erasing.
20 The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids
Once upon a time, in the coun try of Mon golia, there was
an old man and an old woman. Like many people in
Mongolia, they lived in a round tent, called a yurt.In the middle of the tent was a hole to let out the smoke from their fire.
Near their tent was a fenced-in pen where they kept
their five black goats and three black kids—the baby
goats.
Not far from the pen were two bushes. Hid den be hind
these bushes, two wolves had their den. If you walked
by, you could see only their eyes, shin ing in the dark
shade of the bushes.One morn ing, the old man went down to the pen to get
the three little black kids. He brought them back to the
tent (erase the three small black dots) and teth ered themon ropes at the back of the tent, so they could eat the
fresh, new grass that was grow ing there.The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids 21
22 The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids
The old man then went outside to have a good look
around. When he saw no sign of dan ger, he went back
in the tent to have a glass of tea.The mo ment the wolves saw the old man go inside, they
ran up to the pen and jumped to the top of the fence.
The five black goats were so frightened at seeing the
wolves on the fence, they all jumped over the back gate. [Erase five large dots.] Each goat went in a dif ferent di - rection. They were all bleat ing and crying.The old woman heard the commotion. She came out of the tent and ran to the pen. “Oh, where are our goats?” she cried. “I don’t see any of them. All I see is a strange bird.”
The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids 23
24 The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids
For pur poses of introducing other countries, you can do versions of this story as it might be told in ru ral parts of other countries from around the world. For example, in Masai areas of Kenya, it would be calves penned in, the tents might be long to tourists on sa fari, and so on.
THE SMART SHOPPER
Ro ma nian, Greek, Ar me nian This drawing story has many variations and can be found in all parts of Europe. In most of the ver sions I have seen, the figure is a woman, and the items she buys are things to eat, and uten sils with which to eat. Dan ish and Swedish versions, as indicated in Per Gustavsson’s won der ful book Ritsagor, usu ally draw a child as the shopper. In some places, as in the Swiss ver sion that follows, the fig- ure is drawn right side up, and the shopper pays sixty-six cents for ev- erything. In tell ing ei ther version, it would be ap propriate to put in the name of a lo cal mar ket or convenience store, but be sure to keep the lo - cale of the story in Europe. For ex ample, af ter “set off for the lo cal mar - ket,” you could say: “It was a little like ____________ in our neighborhood.” I recently told this story in Ja karta, In donesia, and adapted it to fit things bought for a birthday party for one of the chil- dren in the day-care cen ter where we were having a demonstration story hour.
26 The Smart Shop per
One day, a Greek woman went out to shop for food for
herself and her hus band. She took her shop ping bag and set off for the lo cal market.First, she bought a big pump kin.
Then she bought a smaller melon.
She bought a car rot.
The Smart Shop per 27
28 The Smart Shop per
Then she bought four po tatoes.
She carefully selected some pea pods and some parsley.
“We need something to eat this with,” she said. So she bought two forks.
When she got home she said to her hus band, “Aren’t I a
smart shopper! I got all this for ninety-nine cents!”
[Turn figure right side up.]The Smart Shop per 29
30 The Smart Shop per
Little children of ten like to find and name the dif ferent ob jects that make up the fig ure. You might wish to ask ques tions such as, What are her eyes made of? Her ears? But don’t be labor the process. A fun ex ercise for al most any age is to have the au dience make up their own ver sion of the story, cit ing things they would buy. A good art ex - ercise to fol low this type of drawing story is to show re productions of some of the paint ings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Ital ian art ist who lived from 1527 to 1593. He used fruits, veg etables, and flowers to make in genious portraits. The group can make up their portrait us ing fruits, veg etables, or flow ers. Also, you might wish to use On Mar ket
Street by Arnold and Anita Lobel (New York: Greenwillow, 1981) in
conjunction with these sto ries.THE SMART SHOPPER
Swiss Version In tell ing this, I like to introduce the German words for Mr. and
Mrs.—Herr and Frau. In the blank space where the name of the buyer should go, I usu ally put the name of a teacher or other person of au - thority in the au dience, especially if it is German-sounding. Lit tle chil- dren love to hear the names of their teachers in sto ries, almost as much as they en joy hearing their own names.
32 The Smart Shop per
One day, Frau _______ went to the local store to buy
some things. “Guten Tag, Good Day, Herr ________,”
she said to the owner. “I would like to have two eggs, a sausage, and one of those gin gerbread hearts.”The grocer put all the things in a bag and tied it up
nicely.
“Oh. I al most for got. I need two breakfast rolls, and a
sack of your best flour.” Just as she was go ing out the door, Frau _________ re - membered she needed some mush rooms.The Smart Shop per 33
34 The Smart Shop per
“And you might as well give me two of those forks you have on sale,” said Frau _______.
“That’s it, then, how much does it come to?” “All together, it co mes to sixty-six cents, Frau _______.
Dankeschon. Thank you. Come again.” Now was n’t she a smart shop per!
The Smart Shop per 35
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Ger man, Swiss Here is a drawing story that usu ally requires two par ticipants. It is most of ten ini tiated by an older child (the teller) trying to trick a younger child (the drawer). Usu ally, this youn ger child has just learned to write the al phabet. It is typ ical of the kind of story young children like to try on their even youn ger peers, to see if they will catch on before admitting to something silly or stu pid. A commonly known one has the teller ask ing the lis tener to re peat “Just like me” af ter ev ery sentence of the story.
When do ing this for an au dience of young children, it would be appropriate to tell it as I give it here, rather than at tempting to ask one child to be the guinea pig (pun in tended!). When telling to kin dergar- ten or first grade, it is fun to have the chil dren, each with a small piece of pa per and pencil, draw along with you. They are simply so in - volved in get ting the let ters right, they do not see the end com ing. I once told this to an au dience of three hundred first-graders in a school in Singapore, each of whom was drawing along with me, and they ex- ploded with laugh ter at the end. They giggled and laughed at the va ri- ety of pigs they had made: some fat, some skinny, some look ing more like dogs, some looking like no animal at all! It is a per fect way to end a program, and give the children a story to take home and try out on parents or siblings.
38 What Do You Think You Are?
There was once a brother and sis ter who lived on a farm
in Ger many. One day Gretchen asked her lit tle brother,
Hans, “Can you print all the letters of the alphabet now?” “Oh, yes, I know them all,” said Hans.
“Then print your name here,” said Gretchen. Hans
printed his name in large cap ital let ters.
“Do you know how to make an M, for mother?” she
asked. “Of course,” said Hans. “Then put an M over the H, right there” “How about W? Can you print that?” “Sure,” said Hans. “Where do you want it?” “Make two of them, one un der the H and one un der the S.” Hans printed the two W’s.What Do You Think You Are? 39
40 What Do You Think You Are?
“Now put a cap ital C, right here in front of the H, but
not too close.” Hans printed the C.“I think that S is lonely,” said his sis ter. “It needs a small s. Put one just at the top and to the side.” Hans made a smaller s near the big S.
“Can you make small let ters as well?” asked Gretchen.
“If you can, make a small o right here be tween the C
and the H?” Hans made a small o.