This book serves as both a textbook and reference for faculty and students in LIS courses on storytelling and a professional guide for practicing librarians, particularly youth services librarians in public and school libraries. Storytelling: Art and Technique serves professors, students, and practitioners alike as a textbook, reference, and professional guide. It provides practical instruction and concrete examples of how to use the power of story to build literacy and presentation skills, as well as to create community in those same educational spaces. This text illustrates the value of storytelling, covers the history of storytelling in libraries, and offers valuable guidance for bringing stories to contemporary listeners, with detailed instructions on the selection, preparation, and presentation of stories. It also provides guidance around the planning and administration of a storytelling program. Topics include digital storytelling, open mics and slams, and the neuroscience of storytelling. An extensive and helpful section of resources for the storyteller is included in an expanded Part V of this edition.

Whether you want to become a full time storyteller, expand your storytelling repertoire, or simply hire a storyteller, this guide is for you. Everything you want to know about the profession of storytelling can be found in the book. It will help you sell yourself as a freelance storyteller to schools, libraries, museums, festivals, and other events and organizations. It covers the importance of learning from others; how to organize your time, office, and research; and how to use brochures, business cards, press releases, flyers, mailings, showcases, performer lists, and giveaways to get bookings. She also offers advice on dealing with the competition; preparing yourself for your audience, bookers, and performance area; and problem prevention and solution. Prejudice, censorship, and other issues related to storytelling are highlighted in the final chapter, and an appendix contains How to Host a Freelance Storyteller at Your School or Library. Teachers, librarians, clowns, actors, puppeteers, homemakers, and anyone else interested in storytelling professionally will want this book.

The compelling, groundbreaking guide to creative writing that reveals how the brain responds to storytelling Stories shape who we are. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions and mold our beliefs. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human. So, how do master storytellers compel us? In The Science of Storytelling, award-winning writer and acclaimed teacher of creative writing Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can write better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers—and also our brains—create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change. Will Storr’s superbly chosen examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children’s stories. With sections such as “The Dramatic Question,” “Creating a World,” and “Plot, Endings, and Meaning,” as well as a practical, step-by-step appendix dedicated to “The Sacred Flaw Approach,” The Science of Storytelling reveals just what makes stories work, placing it alongside such creative writing classics as John Yorke’s Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story and Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing. Enlightening and empowering, The Science of Storytelling is destined to become an invaluable resource for writers of all stripes, whether novelist, screenwriter, playwright, or writer of creative or traditional nonfiction.

This exploration of model storytelling projects shows librarians how to expand their roles as keepers of the stories while strengthening their communities. Community life is built on its stories. Our history and culture—those of society and of individuals—are passed from generation to generation through stories. Engaging Community through Storytelling: Library and Community Programming examines a wide variety of model storytelling projects across the country, reflecting how storytelling can encourage community attachment, identity, and expression in libraries, community centers, and schools. The contributed essays—written by experts in their fields, many of whom served as developer, fundraiser, director, and implementer of their project—provide detailed information about the inner workings of a wide variety of model storytelling projects from across the country. The authors delineate the need, scope, and audience for each project and offer riveting anecdotes that evaluate the success of that project. Many of the articles are accompanied by one or more photographs documenting the work or practical how-to-do-it guides to encourage and enable replication. Thoughtful commentary on and review of the key concepts in each chapter are provided by the book's editors.