Telling Literary Stories

 

         Illustration by Ernest Howard Shepard from Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), by A A Milne

It's offiffiffic'al, the story and illustrations from A. A. Milne's classic Winnie-the-Pooh is now in the Public Domain.  This means the many adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood that A. A. Milne wrote are now available for reprinting or storytelling.

What is NOT Public Domain are the various ways Walt Disney Productions has used the stories and created their own illustrations. 

For a thorough discussion of this I recommend the Wikipedia article, Winnie-the-Pooh . It also references Winnie the Pooh (Disney character). 

The popularity of Milne's character brings up a storytelling issue not limited to this lovable teddy bear. How do you handle literary stories?

The fact that Milne intentionally wrote the various adventures as short stories to be read to his son, the namesake for the character of Christopher Robin, also makes them easy to re-tell. That's precisely why today I want to explore the idea of telling -- or re-telling -- literary stories.

I believe storytelling by its very nature is re-telling. I realize ancient storytellers like the druids believed in training their students to tell their stories word-for-word. I also have known other storytellers with a theatre background who tell stories word-for-word. I, too, come from a theatre background, but feel rather like Pooh who is called a "bear of very little brain" as nowadays I tend to act more improvisationally. Frankly I just don't have the greatest memory and also find when storytelling it keeps the story "in the moment" as opposed to something that feels dead on a page.

If I chose to re-tell the Pooh stories I would certainly study the originals carefully. In the actual telling I would create a visual representation by bringing along a battered teddy bear. This would be rather like the way the New York Public Library did a display of the original Winnie-the-Pooh toys. I suspect they also read from the original book. I try strongly to correct anyone who says I am there to "read" a story if I have come to tell instead. After years as a children's librarian, that clarification sometimes is a bit "muddied" depending on if I am there as a librarian or as a storyteller.

So the question I want to bring to my fellow storytellers is: How do you handle literary stories? Do you attempt  word-for-word or do you re-tell those stories maintaining some of the original while summarizing the story and using your own words as needed?

I look forward to hearing from my fellow storytellers and will post replies here.