Drawing Stories
from Around the World
and a Sampling
of European
Handkerchief Stories
Anne Pellowski
Draw ing Sto ries
from Around the World
and a Sam pling of European
Hand kerchief Sto ries
Anne Pellowski
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).
Con tents
The Wolves, the Goats and the Kids—Nineteenth-Century Amer i can, Eu ro pean, Mon go lian. . . 19
The Cheer leader. . . 139
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
How Man and Woman Found Their Place in the World . . . 246
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
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.
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 bookOn 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
saw this custom doc umented: Satoshi Kako’sNihon 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 whereekaki uta were to be found. I owe a debt to all of them, be causeekaki 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.
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, inVis 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 der-ing 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.
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
kanjiwriting 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 hundredekaki 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. Performingekaki 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).
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 language 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 bookThe 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 calledKaszubskie 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,
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”).
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.
For Those Who Feel They Can not Draw
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 bookThe 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 characters 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 bookOut 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.”
“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.”
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.
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?”
“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.
THE KEY
Dan ish
A won derful in troduction to any pro gram about castles or princes and prin cesses, this story is made even more im pressive if you can find a large metal key in this shape. Show it only af ter you have completed the story. Other Dan ish versions cite a prin cess as the main character. Choose whichever you prefer.
There was once a Prince who lived in a castle with three
towers. Here is his cas tle.
It was al ways very busy in the castle. One day, the
Prince decided to go for a walk. He walked around to
the side of the cas tle and along the straight path in front
of it. After a while he came to a big lake.
He saw that there was an is land in the lake.
It was n’t far, so he swam to the is land and played there
all day, hav ing fun all by himself, with no one to or der
him about.
He stum bled, bumped against an other stone, and con
-tinued on his way.
But be fore long, he bumped against a third stone, a
big-ger one.
When he ar rived at the cas tle door, he could not open it
because he had lost his key when he stum bled in the
dark.
Who can help him find the key?
PER’S TROUSERS
Swed ish
While drawing sto ries of this type can be found in many Eu ro-pean coun tries, this one seems to be unique to Swe den. I learned it from Per Gustavsson, one of Swe den’s best-known sto rytellers. He states that it has been known in Sweden since the early 1900s. I use the name Per for the boy in the story, which is pronounced “pear,” like the fruit. But if you want to use this story with a very fa mous Swed ish children’s book called Pelle’s New Suit by Elsa Beskow, you might want to sub stitute the name Pelle.
Per is a Swedish boy. This is where he lives.
His best friend is Lisa. She lives over here.
One day Per went over to Lisa’s house and asked her if
she would like to go outside and play on a nearby hill.
Lisa said yes, so they went tum bling down the curvy
hill.
After that, they started climbing back up the hill on a
dif fer ent path.
Suddenly, with a swish, they fell back down.
[Make the downward stroke very fast.]
Finally, they climbed the other side of the curvy hill
back to his house. No one was at home.
“Let’s go to my house,” said Lisa. Per fol lowed her home.
Lisa’s mother mended Per’s trousers. [Shade in space at
waist.]
“There you are!” she said. “All fine again.”
LIGHT BULB
Swed ish, Amer i can
This is ac tually only based on a tra ditional drawing story. The original, which has been around at least since the 1940s, is a slightly vulgar tale about a woman in a girdle and what hap pens when she bends over. It is curious that it was re ported extensively in Swe den in the post–World War II years, but was obviously known in the United States as well. Did soldiers in that war ex change it? We will probably never know.
Katy Horning, of the Co operative Children’s Book Center in Madison, Wis consin, re members it well from her school years while growing up in the 1960s in Des Moines, Iowa. I have also found a num-ber of other adults who were teen-agers in those years, who remem-bered the drawing, but no story.
Here, Nisse is used as the name of a Swed ish boy. If you wish to tie this in to a Christmas program, turn him into the Dan ish Christmas elf, called anisse. You must then explain what a nisse is.
Here is Nisse, peep ing over the top of some thing. It is a
book, be cause Nisse likes nothing better than to read. It
is his fa vor ite ac tiv ity.
You can of ten find him sit ting there, head be hind his
book, read ing away, read ing away.
How ever, Nisse also likes music. Sometimes you see
him be hind his mu sic stand, play ing the flute. He loves
to tootle away for hours at a time.
Some weeks he reads or plays the flute ev ery day for
hours. He forgets to tidy up his room.
His Papa scolds him: “Nisse, son, if you do not tidy up
this room, I will take away your books and your flute!
[For a Christmas version, I usually have the father
threaten he will not take
nisse
along to the homes where
he leaves treats.]
So Nisse takes the vacuum cleaner and vac uums all
around the room.
All of a sudden the room is very dark. “I can’t finish
vac u um ing,” says Nisse. “The light bulb has burned
out.”
There are not manynissepicture books actually showing what a
HOW TO GET RID OF MOSQUITOS
Par a guayan
I have never en countered this figure in any other country. There are not many bulldogs in Par aguay. Perhaps the story en tered Para-guay with the Ger man Men nonites who set tled there in large num bers in the nine teenth century.
There was once a mother in Paraguay who had two
chil-dren. Here are her two chil chil-dren.
One day she took them out to play on the pa tio behind
their house.
Below the patio there was a large
olla,
a pot, in which
they kept the wa ter used for wa tering the plants. It was
also a favorite place for mosquitos to lay their eggs.
When the mother no ticed a lot of mosquitos flying
around her chil dren, she put a mos quito net around one
side of the patio.
She put a sec ond mos quito net around the other side of
the pa tio.
Then she put a huge third mos quito net around
every-thing.
The children did not like be ing en closed in all those
nets. First one punched a hole in the net. Then the sec
-ond child punched a hole in the net.
The wind came along and blew the torn net ting out
above the holes.
LITTLE CIRCLE, BIG CIRCLE
In do ne sian
Virtually all teachers of young chil dren in Indonesia seem to be aware of this charming story. A variant is also known in Ma laysia (see the fol lowing story). It should really be sung, pref erably orig inally in Bahasa In donesia and then in Eng lish. If you can not find some one to sing it in Bahasa, at least try to say a few of the phrases. The full text in Bahasa is given in the “Sources” sec tion, together with in structions on how to sing it. The end pic ture is in terpreted differently by children, depending on where they grow up. Some see a teddy bear, others a pig, still others a ko ala or a monkey. Af ter performing the story, ask the chil dren what they see. Dis cuss what other an imal might be in the picture, de pending on who is looking at it. Chil dren of the rain for est seem to perceive only a monkey in the drawing.
Lit tle cir cle,
Lit tle cir cle,
Big ger cir cle.
Lit tle cir cle,
Lit tle cir cle,
Big, big cir cle
Add a ba nana,
Add a ba nana
Add a big ba nana
Lit tle cir cle,
Lit tle cir cle
A six, times six;
That makes thirty-six.
A six, a six
Add an an gle!
GOOD NIGHT!
Ma lay sian
This drawing story figure could have originated in Ja pan, where a similar figure is widely known. In the In donesian ver sion, as men -tioned in the previous tale, this is per formed while singing a de lightful song. In Malaysia, it is commonly told to small children as a prep ara-tion for bed time or naptime, or during the evenings of Ramadan.
A small circle; a small circle.
Now, a big ger circle.
Then, a great big circle!
Six times six;
That makes thirty-six.
I love Papa! I love Mama!
Good Night!
And what hap pens?
RIGHT ANSWER, WRONG ANSWER
Ma lay sian
It is al ways in teresting to have sto ries that give two sides of a demonstration or question. Here is a story, in two ver sions, with which most students can identify. Tell both versions and then ask the audience which they prefer. What does this tell us about at least some children in Ma laysia, and their at titude to school? If you can get hold of some Malaysianringgit coins, you can show those in ad vance and there is no need to explain what ringgit are. Oth erwise, be fore telling the story, explain that ten ringgit are the ap proximate equivalent of four dollars.
It rained,
and rained,
and rained,
and rained.
The waves came.
Father gave me ten
ringgit
. Mother gave me ten
ringgit
.
I went to school.
Teacher asked: “How much is three plus three?”
I an swered: “Six.”
Teacher said: “That is cor rect!.”
(Sec ond Ver sion)
Do ex actly the same for the first four drawings, up through the phrase: “I went to school.” Then change as follows.
Teacher asked me: “How much is three plus three?
I an swered: “Three plus three is eight!”
Teacher said: “Wrong!”
“Now you must stay after school.”
THE
DOH
BIRD
Ben gali
Like many of the Japaneseekaki uta, this is full of puns in the orig i-nal Bengali. For ex ample, to count from one to five in Bengali, one says:ek, doi, teen, char, panch. The doi or two is writ ten ex actly as the figure in the feet is given be low. The letter that has the “d” sound in Ben -gali is pro nounced “doh” and is written like the first fig ure in the drawing be low (al though the tail is some what ex aggerated here for purposes of the story). Be fore telling this, I do not explain aboutdoh
anddoi, un less I know I have children from In dia or Ban gladesh in the audience. How ever, after telling it to chil dren eight and older, it is fun to show how we can make up stories using pictures hidden in some of our numbers and letters.
The
Doh
had a bel lyache.
A re ally bad bellyache.
Auntie came along and said: “Here are two stools. Sit
down and take a rest.”
The bel lyache got worse.
Auntie called the doctor. The doc tor took a good look all
over
Doh
.
HOW MAN AND WOMAN FOUND
THEIR PLACE IN THE WORLD
Chi nese
There are numerous leg ends that tell how Chi nese first came to be written down us ing strokes that some times make a picture. One is given in the in troduction. As stated there, some Chi nese char acters are based on pictures of the words they sig nify, but most are not. Still, a clever person can usually find a pic ture hidden in the character. In some Chi nese fam ilies, short sto ries are in vented to help the chil dren remember key characters that rep resent names and facts in that family’s history.
If you have a friend or relative who knows how to do Chi nese cal -ligraphy, in vite him or her to draw the characters as you tell the story. The ideo graphs to the right de pict the word or words cap italized in each sen tence be low. The small let ters in dicate the or der of the strokes and the point at which each stroke begins. In other words, in the first character, for Man, one must be gin the sec ond stroke at the top, where the small “b” is located, and not go from bottom to top.
Long ago, Man stood up and started to walk on two
feet, like this.
Now Man thought he was the cen ter of the uni verse. He
looked around and saw that he was quite small in
com-parison to many things around him. So Man stretched
out his arms to feel Big and Tall.
But wherever Man looked, there was some thing big ger
than he was. Most of all, when he looked up he saw the
Heav ens above.
Man tried to pierce the heav ens. He be came a Learned
Man and a Worker.
He bought a Field and be gan to grow rice.
He planted a Tree near his field, so that he would have
shade in which to rest af ter working in the rice field.
But he still lacked some thing. “I need Woman,” he said.
At first, man pictured Woman in a bowing po sition.
“No, she must be still more hum ble,” said man. He
showed Woman kneeling down, as though she were
kneeling down in front of man.
But Woman was not the kind of per son to kneel for
long. She got up and be gan to take big strides, to show
that she could keep up with man.
The man and woman had a Baby.
THE ABSENT-MINDED JUDGE
Ko rean
The creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was a stupendous cultural achieve ment ac complished in the fif teenth cen tury. Before that Ko reans used Chi nese script. There fore, they have in herited many of the same ways of tell ing sto ries through the use of pictures hid den in ideo graphs. The So ci ety of Ko rean Oral Lit er a ture, af fil i ated with Se oul Na tional Uni versity, has col lected a number of funny drawing sto ries, most of them tied in with the learn ing of Chi nese characters or letters of the Ko rean al phabet. Some of them are filled with sex ual nuances more suited to adult telling. This short, sim ple tale is a good springboard for discussing the different ways we have of addressing each other, the fact that we like to use visualization to help us remember things, and that we all sometimes make mistakes!
Before telling the story, it is a good idea to have a short discussion on the ways in which we greet oth ers po litely, in public: Mis ter, Mrs. Miss, Ms. in English; Mon sieur, Madame, Mademoiselle in French; and so on. The ac cepted ad dress in Jap anese is to add san to the sur -name, for ex ample, Pellowski-san. In the same way, sobang is used in Korean, added on to the surname.
Long ago in Ko rea there was an ab sent-minded judge
who was sent to a new place to hold his court. He took
out a square piece of pa per and called out to his new as
-sistant: “What is your name?”
“My fam ily name is Pae,” an swered the as sistant. Pae
means “pear” in Eng lish.
The judge wanted to remember his new assistant’s
name, so he lifted his writ ing brush, dipped it in ink,
and hast ily drew a pic ture of some thing round, that he
thought would re mind him of a pear.
The next day, the judge wanted his new as sistant to
come and help him. He tried to remember his name, but
could not. He looked at the piece of pa per. It looked like
a pic ture of a ball, which is
kong
in Ko rean.
“Come here, Kong-sobang,” called the judge. “Your
name is Kong, is n’t it?”
“No, sir. I am Pae-sobang,” an swered the as sistant,
which, of course, trans lates as Mr. Pear, not Mr. Ball.
The judge looked at his pic ture. He did not want it to be
wrong. He quickly added a stroke. “Oh, I see the stem
fell off of my pear over night,” he said.
Jap a nese
As men tioned in the In troduction, ekaki uta (pic ture drawing story chants) are a fre quently en countered play activity among Jap anese children. Each of the sto ries in this sec tion has been freely adapted from the rough trans lations given to me by Shigeo Watanabe, and Sachiko Saionji Watanabe (no re lation). I have tried to keep a bit of the rhythm of the original Japanese words, but that was not always pos si-ble. When ever possible, I have in dicated where there is a pun on the words in the orig inal version, and I have tried to in clude a pun in the translated version as well. When draw ing and tell ing these sto ries, try to chant the phrases in a lilting kind of sing-song manner.
After hear ing and see ing a num ber of these sto ries, children of ten like to try do ing them on their own. It takes some prac tice to get the figures drawn so that the parts are of a good size in re lation to the whole. This might make a good short ex ercise in math ematical rela-tionships. An art or number ac tivity that chil dren re spond to with en-thusiasm is to cre ate a face or other figure using only numbers.
THE CAREFREE GIRLS
Jap a nese
According to most scholars in Japan who have stud ied the ekaki uta, the fig ure en countered most frequently is of a hu man face. This seems to have been the case from the ear liest re corded fig ures. It would take an en tire book to give all the variations that have been re-corded. Here is a typical vari ant. In Jap anese, there is a wonderful pun on the Japanese num ber eight in the phrase, “they ate honey.” Luckily, this trans lates well by us ing the fig ure eight as a hair-bow, at the point in the story when the girl “ate” (eight) the honey.
Te-ko-chan, a lit tle girl of Japan,
Has a best friend, Ku-ko-chan.
They ate some honey.
Their sis ter scolded them.
Hei-ki-de; hei-ki-de
. They don’t care; they don’t care.
They are as care free as two lit tle birds.
They went to school and took a test.
They got a zero.
IS IT GRANDFATHER?
Jap a nese
Here is an other common face-drawing story chant. This one was often chanted by using syllables from the hirakana or katakana meth ods of writ ten Jap anese, or fig ures from kanji, the writ ten form of Japanese based on Chi nese characters. To ap preciate the puns in this story and in oth ers as well, one should learn the names and figures for tra di-tional Japanese numbers:
ichi ni san shi go (cur rent use)
hito futa mi yo itsu(tra di tional use)
one two three four five
Take a one.
One and one are two.
Are these three wrinkles?
Is this a bald head?
Are there four whis kers on this chin?
Go! Go! Look at that!
Is it grand father?
SHALL I DRAW YOUR PORTRAIT?
Jap a nese
The mon key ap pears fre quently in Jap anese draw ing sto ries. In almost all cases, num bers are used to make up part of the fig ure. Com-pare this with the num ber quiz story in my earlier book, The Story Vine.
Shall I draw your por trait?
First, I must make a ten, sideways.
Then I must make a three, also sideways.
Next I must put in two small ze ros.
Below them, I must put in a small hill.
Above them, I put in a curv ing road.
Now two doughnuts: one for you and one for me!
Now stick your tongue out be cause—
TO HELP YOU FEEL BETTER
Jap a nese
The word maruin Japanese means “circle.” By add ingchan, one gets the girl’s name Maruchan. This name is often used in Japanese drawing stories while drawing a cir cle and re ferring to a girl at the same time.
Maruchan fell down.
She got a big bump on her head.
Her brother put a ban dage around her head.
Maruchan stuck out her tongue!
Mother came and said:
THE OCTOPUS
Jap a nese
This is one of the most pop ular of all ekaki uta. There are many ver-sions and most Japanese children who have just learned to write can chant and draw this lit tle story. Make sure you do six strokes of “rain-ing.” When I first started doing this, I oc casionally would stop at five strokes and I was once informed by a first-grader, very solemnly, that an oc topus has eight ten tacles. I try to make sure I now get it right.
Three lit tle worms came crawling along, crawling along,
crawl ing along.
Three rice crackers were sing ing a song, sing ing a song,
singing a song.
It started rain ing, rain ing, rain ing, rain ing, rain ing, rain
-ing [make sure you do six].
It started sleeting, sleet ing, sleet ing, sleet ing, sleet ing,
sleet ing, sleet ing.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Ja pan
Thisekaki uta is very popular with Japanese chil dren be cause fish are very im portant in their diet. Also, when vis iting ponds and streams, they love to capture small minnows or goldfish and take them home in a bowl or plastic bag.
Once there was a small moun tain.
At the eastern foot of the mountain were three houses.
In the houses lived some farmers.
In spring they planted a garden.
In the other di rection they planted three rows of
let tuces.
To the west of the garden were two ponds.
A round one—
And an oval one.
Oh! The pond is over flowing.
The big fish got away!
THE DUCK
Jap a nese
It is better not to give away the ti tle of this at the be ginning. In Jap -a nese, ni is the num ber two (see the story IS IT GRANDFATHER? on p. 103). It can also be the word for brother. Yen are Japanese money units. If you wish to substitute dollars or cents, do so.
My two broth ers
Got three yen.
They bought a small ball.
One brother asked:
“What let ter do question words be gin with?”
The other brother an swered:
“W—for who, what, when, where, how.”
“That’s right. So put a W sideways, here,”
said the other brother.
WHAT HAPPENED
AFTER THE RAIN
Jap a nese
Thisekaki uta has many variations. Some times the pig is shown from the side; at other times it is shown fac ing forward, as here.
One day it rained
And it rained
And it rained.
It rained so hard, pud dles be gan to form. A pud dle
formed here.
Two puddles formed here and here;
The pud dles overflowed and made a big pud dle.
It rained more, very heavily.
The puddles overflowed again.
They made a gi ant puddle!
After do ing the drawing, if you have lit tle children in
your audience who are just learning their numbers, ask
them, How many ones are in the draw ing? Help them
count the ten ones if they can not see them all. Then, ask
them, How many ze ros are in the drawing. Again, help
them to count the ten ze ros. [Don’t forget the three in
the tail.]
PANDA
Jap a nese
Do not give the ti tle un til the end of the story. It would be good to lo cate afuroshiki, a square silk cloth used for wrapping special gifts in Japan. You could then use this story to introduce different ways of wrapping or pre senting gifts in var ious parts of the world.
First, I put down two chopsticks.
Next, I put three beans in place.
Two of the beans are still in their pods.
I wrap them all up care fully in a
furoshiki
.
The ends of the cloth make two round bumps, at the
top.
Oh, look, I have a friendly panda to give as a gift.
THE CHEERLEADER
Jap a nese
Again, do not give away the story sur prise by tell ing the ti tle un til the very end. Note that most of the num bers from one to ten can be found in this drawing. If appropriate and if time al lows, ask the chil -dren in the au dience, Who can find a one in the draw ing? Who can find a two? and so on. Give each child a marker of a dif ferent color and ask each to come up and trace the number in your fin ished drawing. If you pre fer to have girls instead of boys playing baseball, substitute “two sis ters” in line two for “two brothers” and change the other lines as necessary.
Lit tle Zero
Had two broth ers.
They both liked to play base ball.
Older Brother was the best hitter. He was al ways bat ter
number four in the line up.
He hits a home run. [Stroke over the horizontal stroke in
the four and add the circle at the end.]
The peo ple cheer.
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
CICADA
Jap a nese
This story is ac companied by a very well-known song, sung in most early grades in Japanese schools. For those wish ing to sing it, the music is given in Iwai (see the Bib liography). The term used for the an-tennae in most versions is whis kers, but use an an-tennae if you wish to be more sci en tif i cally correct.
On a moonlit desert, I open up my big um brella.
Suddenly, over the top I see two lit tle eyes peer ing at
me.
Two whis kers start sway ing in the wind.
A wing flaps by and folds up on the right.
Another wing flaps by and folds up on the left.
WATCH OUT!
YOU’LL TURN INTO A FROG!
Jap a nese
In many versions of this drawing story, the marbles are peas. However, marbles seem more ap propriate here. Don’t give the ti tle to the story before telling it. I have sub stituted more com monly known names for the boy and girl than those gen erally used by Jap anese chil-dren when tell ing and draw ing. If you pre fer, reverse the names and have the boy stick out his tongue at the girl, and change into a frog. You might even use this as a hu morous introduction to variants on “The Frog Prince.”
Ichiro was a boy in Ja pan.
He had two small marbles and two big marbles.
Along came Kiyoko. She asked Ichiro for some of the
marbles. He would not give her any.
Kiyoko stuck out her tongue at Ichiro!
CATERPILLAR
Jap a nese
I saw this chanted by a child us ing green chalk on a sidewalk. Pickled plums are a Japanese del icacy. Later, I saw other ver sions in which the cat erpillar is depicted as one long hor izontal stroke with a series of short vertical strokes through it, and two round eyes, thus:
I lined up five dumplings on my plate.
On the big gest dump ling, I put two pick led plums.
Three hairs popped out of the dump ling on this side.
And three more popped out on this side.
SANTA CLAUS
Jap a nese
Santa Claus is al most as important in modern Japanese culture as he is in North America. This drawing story could be used to find out the dif ferent choices chil dren would make if they were inventing and drawing the story in North America. Draw the story as shown here, using col ored markers on white pa per: red for the hat, black out line for the white items, pink for the ears and mouth. Colored chalk could also be used, on a blackboard. Then ask the children to draw Santa and name the dif ferent foods they would see as part of the pic ture. This story can also be used as a felt-board story, in which case each item should be made entirely in col ored felt and placed on a neutral felt background.
