When I was nine-years-old, Mrs Bell, the teacher from the other form, would visit our classroom once a week to read us a story. From the first word, we were transfixed. It didn’t matter what she was reading — her voice was like a spell: charismatic, compelling, drawing each one of us inexorably into whichever world she had chosen that day.
The moment break-time came, the class would rampage to the school library, desperate to be the first to get hold of a copy of that week’s book so we could carry on reading it. Henceforth, it would pass from hand to hand till everyone had had their turn.
Something quite particular happens to a story when you hear it read out loud; it’s quite a different experience to absorbing it directly from the page. There is less time to reflect and to process, but the impact is richer and more dramatic. Each time, it’s like a new recipe, the triple ingredient of reader, listener and story producing endlessly varied results. Little wonder that, thousands of years after humans first learned to write stories down, we still choose to speak them aloud as well — and not just for children who haven’t yet learned to read.
We have, of course, just emerged from the ultimate festival of storytelling; at Pesach, we are not merely encouraged, but commanded to relate the story of the Exodus to our children so that it may pass down through the generations.
It’s notable that we are not told to make our children read the story; we have to actively tell it to them. “Haggadah” literally means “telling”.
A gifted story-teller has the most amazing power. I had a friend when I was at primary school whose birthday party every year featured a particular highlight. Her mother would sit all the children on the floor in her living room with the curtains drawn and the lights dimmed, and tell us a ghost story.
Sitting there in the dark, there was nothing to focus on but her resonant voice, which now dropped to a whisper, and now crescendo-ed dramatically as the story reached its climax. It was deliciously terrifying.
I wasn’t at all traumatised by these ghost stories, (which undoubtedly these days would have garnered some stiff emails from disapproving parents), but another story-telling experience nearly finished me off, even though by then I was an adult.
In my first publishing job, I was escorting one of my authors to perform at a literary festival. As well as being a published writer, he was also a professional story-teller — that is, he told stories out loud for a living. He announced that he was going to tell a tale about a crow. “During the story,” he explained, “I’m going to keep pointing at different people. If I point at you, you have to caw.”
“He’s going to point at me, ” I thought, in horror. I’m an introvert and I really dislike drawing attention to myself in public. “He’s bound to, because he knows me. And I’m going to have to caw. Like a crow. But I can’t caw. I can’t. I think I might actually be about to die.”
(I may have been overreacting a little.)
As the story progressed, my heart beat faster and faster until, with a feeling of blessed relief, I realised he had reached the end without singling me out.
To this day, though, the mention of crows produces a little fillip of panic in me.
My mother and father would read to me every bedtime, each having a different book on the go so that they, too, could enjoy it in full.
They didn’t have quite the talent of Mrs Bell or my friend’s mum, but that didn’t matter, because they were my parents which counts for a lot in the story-telling stakes.
The older I got, the more challenging the book choices became, culminating in my mother reading Jane Eyre to me when I was 11.
This had somewhat mixed success. I was precocious enough to follow the story, but not sufficiently mature to even begin to appreciate the subtlety of the characterisation or the complexity of the ideas. It inspired in me, however, a love of the Brontës that burned brightly for many years.
Now, as my daughter Emily approaches the end of primary school, I am reading her the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It’s a joint pleasure; she is absorbed by the exciting plot and rich characters; I am seduced by the vitality of Pullman’s prose, made all the more apparent when spoken out loud.
Occasionally, I pause, struck momentarily dumb by the beauty of the sentence I’ve just read. Emily senses what I’m thinking and, “I liked the sound of that,” she says.
Since the crow episode, I have had three kids. One of the advantages of parenting small children is that you learn to make ridiculous animal noises with relative impunity.
Occasionally, I try cawing in the privacy of my home, curious to know if I’d now be up to the challenge should the situation recur. I’m pretty sure I could carry it off.
@susanreuben
