"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales." <Albert Einstein>
Storyteller Sessions is a charitable service organization created to teach kids to read through engaging stories from throughout the world, through multiple languages with moving images told by storytellers from all accents and cultures with emphasis on helping those with learning disabilities.
Who? What? Where? Why? How? When?
"Read me a story, read me a story, read me a story!"
If you have heard this from a child, you understand.
You can't always be there. You don't always have time to read your child a story before bedtime, or anytime it seems. But you know how important it is. You dont want to just plop them down in front of the TV. You remember how much you loved when someone read you a story. You remember how much you loved those old childen's book illustrations.
When was the last time someone read you a story?
Storytelling is an art. The history goes back thousands of years, before movies, television, radio, records, even writing. In fact, storytelling is the first form of entertainment and education. It was the way cultural traditions, skill training, oral history, and moral training was passed down. It not only conveys information, it helps us understand how it applies to our situation. And it does all this while entertaining us.
Who?
The most important people in history have been great storytellers; philosophers, spelling, politicians, actors. To tell a story is to teach, to inspire, to remind us of the important principals of life; kindness, ingenuity, understanding, hard work, tolerance and love.
What?
Stories have been told for all kinds of reasons; to inspire, educate and entertain.
"In the earliest days of the theatre you just had one actor on stagetelling a story" <A Perfect Wedding by Charles L. Mee>
Why?
Research has shown not only that young children benefit from reading to them. Even babies begin to read lips to learn how to form their first words. (cite)
Here are just some reasons its important to augment your effort to read to your child with the Storyteller sessions:
How?
We are recording Storyteller Sessions in the Los Angeles area, then New York to Sydney, Australia, to Paris France. Then Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Where?
The Storytale App once finalized will reside at storytales.io.
When?
Currently.
Our story?
It started simple. After serving for 12 years as a Congressional staffer, I decided to scale back my responsibilities and pursue my passion for storytelling. While digging in deeper into the craft of writing/directing and trying to make manifest my ideas; a new concept of storytelling reached out and grabbed me. My niece, Sophia, would always asked me to read her a story before I left. I got to thinking how awesome it would be if there were some bedtime story "readings" professionally acted for her iPad with beautifully animated artwork.
Because Sophia has dyslexia, I imagined a scrolling text bar to help her practice reading with the spoken word highlighted. With the animation assistance of my Emmy award winning friend, Jason, I have continued to develop the concept with even more features and benefits for kids. - "StoryBlocks", alternative languages and eventually an interactive app that utilizes some novel brain research.
The focus is the "telling" of the story in a expressive way, through character, voice and tone as well as subtle and discrete motion graphics to visually engage the child through multiple readings. Storytelling is the beginning of human communication, even babies prefer a person reading to them. In fact, babies too might benefit. In addition to parents reading with the child, the app allows more.
The inevitable app would be designed to allow the child to turn on and off interactive elements, so they could just see the actor "reading" or just the text & voice etc. This "Storytelling Format" is designed to be an adjunct to books, or movies. It replicates the bedtime story that our parents used to read us, as they showed us the beautiful illustrations.
The Art of Storytelling
There are many great articles on storytelling:
How To Become An Awesome Storyteller
The Caveman as a Storyteller