Frontpage | The Author | The Books | The Illustrations | The Storyteller | Talks on Writing | Teacher Reviews | Childrens Reviews | Video Clips | Costume Photos | Format of Visit | Book Sales | Contact Me

The Story Teller

And now it comes time for me to speak of my role as a children’s storyteller. I do my storytelling in primary schools all over Ireland. I am available privately or as part of the Writers in Schools Scheme run by Poetry Ireland which is an offshoot of the Arts Council. This means I am vetted every three months by An Garda Síochána for my suitability to work with children. For my storytelling and all other related children’s activities, I would like to state clearly that I do not work with children unsupervised, at least one teacher or librarian must be present at all times. If they leave the room, I leave the room.

By invitation and recommendation I go around primary schools, libraries, bookshops and community events doing my storytelling and giving talks on getting started in writing. In primary schools I do my live storytelling show for junior infants up to and including fourth class and for fifth and sixth classes I do a talk on How to Get Started in Writing Commercially. My visit generally caters for the full school.

For my storytelling I dress up in a wolf’s costume (See Costume Photographs) and act out the characters in my first book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs & the Big Bad Wolf. I retell the story from the wolf’s point of view and claim that it was all the fault of The Three Little Pigs. I try to convince the children that I am really a good wolf. It is a very interactive all action show with a lot of screaming and shouting and running around and falling on the ground by me, not the children. The children are encouraged to take part by doing the sound effects to many of my actions and are asked to vote every so often as to whether I’m a good wolf or a bad wolf. If they decide I’m a bad wolf, I throw a tantrum and start stamping my foot and crying. Each show takes about a half an hour.

It is lovely seeing the little eyes looking up at you and hearing the laughter and the things the children have to say either during or after my shows. For me school visits are wonderful. They are so different from my previous life. No stress, no strain, no late nights and no office politics. I am generally treated by both the children and the teaching staff as if I was visiting Royalty.

For fifth and sixth class Primary School Pupils I do a talk on How to Get Started in Writing Commercially. (There will be more about that later. See Talks on Writing hyperlink.)

Since my first book was published in October 2001 I have done my Storytelling and Talks on Writing in over 700 schools, libraries, bookshops and community events nationwide. I have been asked back to many of these schools and libraries over the years.

During my Storytelling the children love to hear about my cat Mister Stinkie. He is the most famous cat in Ireland, as I tell all the children I meet about him and the things he does. And the way he lets rudies just like my friend Dustin on The Den.

I take individual classes, or groups of classes according to age. While there is no strict upper limit on the number of pupils attending, (sometimes I have anything up to 120 or 150 children a show depending on school size and facilities) I find the best results are had by keeping a similar age profile. I generally do junior and senior infants together, next I do first and second class together, then third and fourth class together for the Wolf Shows and I do fifth and sixth class together for either the Talk on Writing or as an alternative part of the Wolf Show plus a Questions & Answers session, depending on the teachers requirements. (There will be more about that later. See Format of Visit hyperlink.)

The storytelling and talks on writing can be done in the classroom or a school assembly hall. It would be advantageous but not totally necessary to have my books read to the children beforehand, as my show is a stand alone live show based on my first book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. (For availability of my book see Book Sales hyperlink.)

What inspired my storytelling?

Well I would like to say that writing and storytelling is in my blood, other members of my extended family are writers, artists, poets and photographers. So it wasn’t off the grass I licked it, there is ink in the blood. My father and grandfather (Lord rest their souls) were well respected storytellers in their own day. My father would make you believe anything he wanted too. Many moons ago when I was growing up in rural Ireland in the late 1950s we had no electricity where I lived out in the country, so there were no televisions or other forms of remote entertainment. (My grandchildren can’t understand this that there were no TVs, Internet, Microwaves or Fridge/Freezers, or any other such gadgets. They think I was brought up in the Stone Age.)

But in those days people made their own entertainment by reading or storytelling. People would go visiting (rambling as it was called back then) to friends and neighbours houses at night. People would tell the most amazing stories about everything under the sun. All the stories were Gospel truth as the storyteller had it on good authority that what ever the story was about had happened to somebody, who knew somebody else, who was a brother or a first cousin of your man over the fields in the next parish whom the whole thing had happened to in the first place, or so you were expertly lead to believe.

But think of the setting, 1950s rural Ireland, it was a winter’s night and my mother (Lord rest her soul) was cooking a dinner over an open fire. The only light other than the fire, which cast shadows on the darkened walls, was an old oil lamp with a big glass globe. Neighbours when they arrived didn’t knock on the door as they didn’t need too, it was never locked in those days anyway.

So when the day’s work was done and the men had arrived home from the fields or wherever they had been and the children were washed and everybody was fed and the neighbours had arrived, the musicians, the singers of sad and ancient laments and the storytellers began their party piece. Sometimes if you were lucky you had all three in the one night. As a child I was often allowed to stay up comparatively late while the storytelling was going on. Later you could hear the musicians or singers from your bedroom.

I remember going off to bed with a candle on an old cracked saucer to the lower room. The candle light flickering ghostly shadows on the walls in the hall after you had heard a load of ghost stories, which were told with the utmost skill and sincerity. I remember as a child being afraid when I undressed to open the wardrobe to put my clothes into it, just in case something would jump out at me. I remember jumping up onto the bed with both feet, in case I stepped up on the bed with one leg and the other leg was snapped off me by something terrible under the bed.

These old storytellers wove images with words and actions. And that’s what I try to do in my storytelling, but without the scary parts. All the stories I tell the children are familiar and non-scary. In the stories I tell in my shows, I challenge the children’s view of the fairy tales and I ask them to believe that black is blue, white is green and yellow is pink. No nightmares or bad dreams. Basically I am a parent myself and I wanted to enjoy my children while they were young. I firmly believe that childhood is a sacred time and should be filled with love and dreams and a sense of wonder and encouragement, where Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are all as real as the sunset over Galway Bay. Nowadays as a parent of grown up children, I miss Christmas with all the plotting and planning and the wonderful feelings when you see the joy on your children’s faces when they realise that Santa has come. Now I’m enjoying my grandchildren.

Contact details for storytelling;

See Contact Me hyperlink:

Email: liamfarrellstoryteller@gmail.com
Poetry Ireland Website:www.poetryireland.ie