A Christmas story from the Austrian Tirol. Kids love when I do the baby voice for the youngest brother! Source: The Long Christmas, by Ruth Sawyer. This telling copyright (c) 2015 by Michael Litzky
Category: Folk Tales
An old folk tale, interpreted for young kids, with lively audience participation!
Glooscap the warrior can’t fight the Winter Giant. Join the kids in the spell which puts Glooscap to sleeeepppzzzzzz… Source: The Maid of the North, by Ethel Johnston Phelps. This telling copyright (c) 2016 by Michael Litzky
I found this Swedish folk tale in a collection called The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World , edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps. This version is aimed more at younger viewers but can be enjoyed by all.
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Wiley and the Hairy Man
It seems that every storyteller has a version of this African American tale. I can’t even remember who I first heard it from but you can find it in The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton. The Hairy Man is all kinds of fun to act out.
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Crick and Crack
I first heard this Irish tale more than 20 years ago from a friend of the family. The faerie people in the story are not cute little elves with pointy hats. They are a proud and ancient people and a mortal who has dealings with them never knows what might happen…
My adaptation of a story that has its origins in several Native American cultures, including Muskogee and Cherokee. It’s a perfect example of a “Pourquoi” story, a story which tells how something came to be. I first heard it from storyteller Mary Ellen Hill, who found it in Michael Caduto and Joseph Bruchac’s Keepers of the Earth .
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Rapunzel
An Original Telling
The Grimm Brothers’ version of this story is, well, grim. One day I was reading Max Lüthi’s Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales where he quotes delightful excerpts from Italian, Maltese and other versions of Rapunzel. I said, “Put those pieces together and you’ve got a wonderful story!” So I did. The shortened telling on this video includes only some of those delightful pieces. Sometime soon I’ll record the full-on version. The ending is my own.
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Wisdom or Luck
I adapted this from a story in the Pantheon collection Yiddish Folktales by Beatrice Weinreich. I love the “story within a story within a story” structure. The ending is my own.
Treehouse is one of the preschools at which I’m the regular weekly storyteller. I really enjoy telling there. The staff is great, the facility is cozy and sweet and they’re always working on innovative projects. You can read more about them at their website. Some of the puppets in this video are made by Folkmanis Puppets.
There are two stories in the video. The first is called “The Old Woman and her Bear.” It’s a very sweet Inuit folk tale about an old woman who adopts a polar bear cub. The kids loved it when I first told it and asked for it many other times. The other is “The King’s Sneeze,” adapted from a Grimm’s tale. You’ll get to see my favorite puppets Willy the Wolf and Francesca the Flying Squirrel and several others. I hope you enjoy the stories. All the original material is copyright © 2010 by Michael Litzky.