The Palace of Stories » Leo’s Blog

The Girl Who Longed For A Grandmother

Alli Brook — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:55:46 +0000

I told this story to a gathering of friends one evening at our house. It was way past my kids’ bedtime and Lara soon nodded off (her snoring becomes part of the story at one point!). There were a couple of 11 year old girls there too, and I think this story might have been for them, so I’m putting it in the 10-12 category.

The story speaks of the pain of not being heard, of not having connection to others, and boy who becomes a man by learning the art of listening.

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The Wild Horsy

Alli Brook — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:52:53 +0000

This is a live recording from my children’s bedside! Normally I take the best stories that I’ve told Luke and Lara at bedtime and re-record them in my recording studio. But this one was simply too good. I was obviously in an especially good mood, and for some reason had plenty of energy. I don’t think I could improve upon it!

Bedtimes are in many ways the worst times for me to be telling stories to my kids. It’s the end of a long day (we usually wake up around 6am, and bedtime is sometime after 7pm) and we’ve just cleaned the house, cooked and eaten supper, which is usually pretty exhausting. Sometimes after eating, Stella and I play accordion together while the children play. In recent months this has seemed to work really well, they actually let us play several tunes without interrupting (it used to be that we would be lucky to get just a couple of tunes in before someone would come running, injured or enraged at some injustice the other had just commited). Now we can play for twenty minutes or more without being disturbed.

The only problem with that is that the kids tend to get more and more excited the longer they play and the closer to bedtime it gets. So that by the time we get to actually going to bed, they are high as kites, and hard to bring down.

I don’t like using stories to do so. Well, I guess it beats yelling. But ideally we’d all be calm and settled, and I’d have great energy.

On this occasion, it was me who had the wild energy, not them! But there’s something lovely about having their giggling in the background. This has me wanting to find quality time in the day to sit and tell them a story, when we’re all calm and awake, and nothing else is happening.

I’ll look into that soon…..

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Mr and Mrs Star

Alli Brook — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:36:33 +0000

The boy in this story makes a huge effort to realise his dreams. He reaches beyond his current potential to discover a whole new world of possibility. I like the image of Mr and Mrs Star all wrapped up in warm hats and coats and drinking tea with the boy at the top of the tree!

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The Glasses-Maker and the Giant

Alli Brook — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:08:51 +0000

I like the Giant in this story, especially when he says “I’ve been working on these a long time…” when handing the Glasses-Maker the glasses that enable the wearer to see only the beauty and perfection in the world.

I’d like a pair of those myself, to be able to see everything in my life as perfect. Even the problems I struggle with, the obstacles I face and the ugliness that I see. I’m touched by the thought that it’s possible to see the world in this way. The way we experienced the world is shaped by the way we see it, and this itself can change, as the glasses maker discovers…

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The Magic Tin

Alli Brook — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:06:10 +0000

This story just kept on travelling. It starts out as a tale of a man selling a rather mysterious, apparently magical, rusty little tin in the market… and developes into a story about a princess and how she uses the tin throughout her life.

The story winds up a long way from where it started, with the Princess, now an old woman, finding her fading memories in that same tin. In the end she uses it as a bridge between this world and the next, so that her favourite grandson can feel her presence when he needs her.

I find that last section quite magical, drawing the listener into the mystery of what happens when we die. I’ve made it a “7 to 9 year olds” story, as there might be some 4 year olds out there who haven’t even wondered about such things, and I’d like to leave then to do so in their own good time!

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Big Words

Alli Brook — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:25:40 +0000

I use a lot of big words in my stories. For example, just recently I used extravagant, ostentatious and conspicuous in Jim and the Colourful Coat. And I threw in the shorter but equally uncommon gourd, gradient and plateau when telling Counting to a Hundred. I know it’s not conventional, but I’ve never been able to shrink my vocabulary for children, not when I was telling regularly in Primary Schools, and not now that I’m recording stories for the Palace of Stories.

Partly this is because, as an intuitive storyteller, I need to lay my hands on words fast, and my job is made easier by having a big vocabulary (and by the English language having so many words to choose from!). But it also comes from a hunch that I’m helping children stretch their own vocabulary this way. Children pick up the meaning of a word from the context it’s in. And even if they don’t pick it up straight away, they’ll get closer to understanding it every time they relisten to the story. My son Luke asks me the meaning of any word in one of my stories that he doesn’t understand, and I imagine children listening to my stories are doing the same with their parents or older siblings.

And the flow of the story is not interrupted by such words. The other words carry the story along. Once a friend brought his Brazilian girlfriend along to one of my adult storytelling performances, at a time when she had a very shaky grasp of English. At the end, she came to me with a beaming face, “I understood everything!”

If we are engaged in the story, we are actively involved in creating its momentum. A few new words here and there are not going to stop our enthusiastic meaning-making. Rather, I can think of few better ways to learn new words.

To Command The Clouds

Alli Brook — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:44:18 +0000

There’s something in this latest story that I like about embracing whatever comes in our lives, trusting that even dark clouds have silver linings, and that everything is unfolding for our highest good, even if it doesn’t immediately appear to be so.

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Jim and the Colourful Coat

Alli Brook — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:10:59 +0000

I knew this story was special as soon as I told it, back in the summer of 2010, but it’s taken me a while to record it. I love Jim’s dilemma, he has this huge urge to buy the outrageously colourful coat he’s just found, even though he can’t possibly see himself ever wearing it. Then he absolutely has to wear it, even though he’s dying of embarrasment to think of anyone spotting him in it. And one thing leads to the next…

I’m reminded of the many times when I’ve felt a strong impulse to follow my heart, even though I know that doing so will make me look a fool, even if only to myself. It’s by taking these kinds of leaps of faith that we can live into our full potential, which is what this story is really about.

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Surrounded by Kin

Alli Brook — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:23:08 +0000

The old woman in this story overcomes her loneliness by seeing bushes, flowers and trees as “kin”. Soon her sense of connection with all life has become infectious, and her once empty house is full of guests!

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Magic Donkey Grain

Alli Brook — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:43:49 +0000

This story surprised me. Right until the end I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Why is the poor donkey getting whacked so often? But it makes sense in the end, and I love how the heavy sacks the donkey has been carrying are full of what will in the end magically renew him.

Needless to say Luke liked this story, and for days after was talking about the donkey getting WHACKED! Stella wasn’t so sure, and to be honest it’s quite rare that the stories I tell have any sort of violence in them. But there’s a deeper message to this story, about how the tougher experiences of life can turn out to be blessings by driving us on to discover the gifts that we carried but knew nothing about.

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