Stories From a Stone

by Maria LoBiondo

“In the beginning, there were no stories.”

That’s how I begin the “Storytelling Stone,” the Native American origin tale of how people began to tell stories. An orphan named Gah-ka, ridiculed by his tribe, goes off on his own and makes camp by a huge stone that looks like a human face. Leaning against the stone, he is startled by the question, “Do you want to hear a story?”

Of course he does, even though he doesn’t know what a story is. But he listens well and becomes the first storyteller, revered by a new tribe he comes to know and with whom he shares this new thing called “story” that he has heard from the Storytelling Stone.

The Stone speaks only in the winter, when there are no crops to care for and the nights are long. We are in a psychological winter during this coronavirus crisis, even if there are daffodils blooming outside the door. 

If there are positives to be found in this new normal, one may be slowing us down from our normally hectic paces. Stories slow us down, too, take us to a time out of time, absorb us in a different reality for the space of the telling.

Within that time we accept the impossible – that stones can speak, for example. And when we slow down we may find that in fact stones can speak, if we listen.

Stones were the theme of the February evening Luray and I spent with about 20 students from kindergarten through high school with Joys, Hopes, and Dreams at the Arts Council of Princeton, a program associated with HomeFront. The inspiration that night came from “Stone,” a Charles Simic poem Luray recites as a story.

We told several stone stories, a Nasruddin story of pushing a great stone; Skunny Wundy outsmarting the Stone Giant in a skipping stone contest, and the Storytelling Stone, in which Gah-ka has a pouch with objects to represent the different stories he has learned from the Stone.

These led up to the Simic poem. As Luray spoke it, we all listened intently, and then she repeated the beginning of the lines and – with only one hearing and no copy of the words to refer to – individuals, unprompted, called out the remaining words, just as Gah-ka listened so deeply to the Storytelling Stone that he was able to repeat all he heard.

Then Luray laid out stones she had collected and asked each participant to choose one and listen to what the stone said to him or her, just as Gah-ka had objects from his pouch to remind him of stories. From these stones, and “pouches” drawn on paper, new stories were formed.

One youngster drew a memory of rolling down a hill with a friend. Another drew the dog she wished someday to own. 

At the conclusion of the Native American tale, the Stone tells Gah-ka that the stories will no longer be kept in the stones but will live in the people. And the stories do, and will, as long as we share them. They can be triggered by an heirloom piece of jewelry, a photograph or letter, a favorite recipe, a remembrance of a special event. The humblest of materials — even a stone — can inspire a story .

Primary resource for the Storytelling Stone: a Seneca tale retold by Joseph Bruchac in Return of the Sun: Native American Tales from the Northeast Woodlands.

Stone, by Charles Simic: https://t54poets.weebly.com/blog/stone-by-charles-simic

Kids Say the Darndest Things

by Maria LoBiondo

Luray Gross at Princeton Arts Council summer camp

Paula Davidoff stood before our mixed-age audience sizing up whether the youngsters could handle the story she wanted to tell. Paula, Luray Gross, and I were deep into the recent Storytelling Arts event at the Arts Council of Princeton, and Paula had a classic — but potentially scary — story in mind to share. 

“Do you know what happened when there were too many mouths to feed in the old days, what happened to children?” 

A boy of about 10 piped up, “They killed them?” 

“With a comment like that, I guess this story won’t be too scary to tell,” Paula said, and launched into “Molly Whuppie,” in which the heroine saves her sisters at the expense of a cannibal giant’s own daughters. 

I was too young to catch Art Linkletter’s show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Linkletter interviewed youngsters whose honest, innocent answers brought shock or peals of laughter from adults. But I’ve nonetheless had a few occasions like the one at the Arts Council when a response caught me by utter surprise. 

One instance occurred, also at the Arts Council, this summer at a camp Luray and I taught to 10- to 12-year-olds. The underlying theme we played with was developing characters. On the second day Luray and I set out different animals, stuffed or plastic, and asked our campers to choose one that “spoke” to them. Then we took time to have that animal character “tell” the camper its name and something about itself. 

V.’s bear “Gris” said he had been “kicked out of the house”; L.’s walrus could “look into another's soul”; N. held “Piglet” whose “dumb sisters” left her computer open so that she was drawn into “a portal” and had to escape. 

Later in the week, Luray shared a Korean poem by Song Sam-mun and “If the Owl Calls Again” by John Haines, then asked the campers to consider what they would transform into if they had the chance. One striking offering was A.’s poem about becoming money and giving herself to the poor. 

My sessions with younger children also have led to surprising moments. In a class of 4-year-olds, we were dramatizing a story that we had shared together several times before, the Mende story from Liberia, “Kanji-jo and the Nestlings” (found in Margaret Read MacDonald’s Look Back and See). In the tale, a group of baby birds go looking for their mother, encountering several other mama birds along the way who do not sing their mama’s distinctive lullaby. 

As a volunteer, K. came forward to be a Mama Robin. When it came time for the Mama Robin to sing, instead of the expected “Chirp, Chirp,” K. belted out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” 

The opposite surprise came in a session with another group of similar age in a version of “The Singing Turtle” (also from Read MacDonald’s Look Back and See). 

Most times when I’ve shared this story the children suggest the turtle “sing” farm and zoo animal sounds with lots of dog and cat woofs and meows in-between. But in a recent session we had a string of stumpers: giraffe, rabbit, zebra, fish, unicorn! We finally settled on dinosaur and all gave a tremendous roar. 

As storytellers, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected — and lively imaginative responses during story times.