Back to work, yippee!

Sometimes when I have days off, I can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Office work? Playing with stories? Planning new programs? Honing my art? Yes, yes, yes and yes, but sometimes I just flap around, then give up and have a nap. That was yesterday. That and the quest for clean clothes. Also, yesterday I discovered that in Brazil, women do not have size 11 feet (42, if you're using European sizes). If I want to go home with Brazilian shoes, they'll have to be men's shoes. Sigh.

Enough of that. Today I got back to work, telling stories at the Sidarta School. 

I performed right next to the library in a wonderful room full of puppets, a puppet stage, dress-up clothes, hats, mirrors and these amazing trees. They're stretchy fabric! 

Notice the automobile tires as seats. They're clean and stuffed with pillows. 

As I have in all the performances in Brazil, I began by showing the map of the US so they can see where I'm from. I also show them where my mother and my brothers and sisters live. It takes a few minutes, as I'm the youngest of seven.

Though the children were far from native speakers, they were great listeners. In this next picture, I'm telling "Mr. Wiggle and Mr. Waggle," a very simple story but one that uses pairs of words: in/out, up/down, open/shut. 

The two older classes had prepared questions to ask. Then a few of them even dared ask a few more. They did splendidly! 

This school is part of the Sidarta Institute. Across the road is a Buddhist temple. Quoting from a brochure from the Institute: "We truly believe that the path to a better world begins with the access to quality education for all." Amen. 

In talking with Carmen, who hosted the performances (and who was tremendously welcoming, as were Robson and the other staff members), I learned that the teaching at the school is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, an approach that I've loved since hearing about it in the late '90s. I mentioned it in a post about Gianni Rodari last year. What I've noticed in RE schools, Sidarta included, is a delightful atmosphere, with a pervasive kindness. Aaah.

The Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories is my Fahrenheit 451 book. You know, when all the books are being burned, there are people out in the forest memorizing their favorites so the work will not perish. I'd be out there with this book. I've even written notes in it--I never write in books.

Why do I love it so much? Rodari was funny, smart and he truly understood kids. He packed this book with ideas, games, stories, random thoughts and serious buffoonery. If he were still alive, I'd be sitting at his feet. In his preface, Rodari writes:

I hope this small book can be useful for all those people who believe it is necessary for the imagination to have a place in education; for all those who trust in the creativity of children; and for all those who know the liberating value of the word. (p. 3-4)

Later he says: "In our schools there is too little laughter, if I may generalize. The idea that the education of a mind must be a dismal affair is among the most difficult things to overcome." (p. 14)

I love it that he has a chapter called Lenin's Grandfather. Here's how it begins:

This chapter is merely a continuation of the previous one. But I am too fond of the idea of a chapter title on Lenin's grandfather to give up the arbitrary caesura. (p. 20)

That cracks me up every time I read it. He goes on to explain that Lenin's grandfather kept benches under the windows in the living room, because the children liked to go in and out that way instead of through the door. He didn't forbid the behavior, he just made it a bit safer.

He writes about the fantastic binomial, taking two unrelated items to make a story. When he was a teacher, he'd have a kid write a word on one side of a two-sided blackboard and another kid write on the other side, at the same time. Then they would create a story from those two. He talks about story logic--for example, a character made of wood has to be careful around fire.

I've found great games in this book, such as "Little Red Riding Hood in a helicopter." Take a familiar story and add an unfamiliar element, then see what happens. Or "Fairy tale salad" where the characters from one story meet those of another (in adult books, Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes series do this wonderfully).

He was a puppeteer at a few times in his life. Here's something he says about puppets:

The true language of the puppets and marionettes is in their movement. They are not made for long monologues or dialogues. If Hamlet recites his monologue in a puppet play, there must be at the very least a devil who from time to time tries to steal the skull and to replace it with a tomato. On the other hand, a single puppet can maintain a dialogue for hours with its audience of children without tiring them, if it knows how to do this. (p. 72)

Trixie approves.

I first heard about Rodari in 1988, when I was in Bulgaria doing research on services for children in Bulgarian public libraries and reading rooms. My friend Vesselin asked me if I'd read this book. Nope, never heard of it. Before I left, he gave me a photocopy of the entire book, translated from Italian into Bulgarian.

I can read Bulgarian, but I'm lazy. I put that photocopy in the back of my file cabinet and forgot about it. Every now and then I'd search for the book at the university library, in case it had been translated into English. It was there in Russian, but because Rodari was Communist, it was not popular in the West. In 1996, Jack Zipes' translation was published. I bought it.

Did I read it? No. It sat on my shelf. In 1998 I was working on a library program that had at its base child-directed learning. I was learning about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education (very cool!). When I asked a RE listserv for resources, the first response was, "Have you read the Rodari book?" I took it off the bookshelf, settled myself on the sofa and wolfed the book right down. I've now read it about eight times.