The reports received represent only a small part of the storytelling that is being done in different parts of the country.
In New Jersey,the organizer of the State Library Commission has found her ability to tell stories and to choose books containing a direct appeal to the people who are to read them,or to listen to the reading of them,an open sesame in the pine woods districts,the farming communities,and the fishing villages,where grown people listen as eagerly as children.In a paper entitled,"The Place,the Man,and the Book,"Miss Sarah B.Askew gives a vivid picture of the establishment of a library in a fishing village.(Proceedings of the American Library Association.1908.)[4]
[4]Reprinted as a pamphlet by The H.W.Wilson Company.
Recognizing a similar need for the interpretation of books to the communities where libraries had already been established,the Iowa Library Commission appointed in 1909an advisory children's librarian,who is also a professional storyteller and lecturer upon children's literature.
In the Public Lecture courses of New York City,it has been found that storytelling programs composed of folk tales draw large audiences of grown people who enjoy the stories quite as much as do the children.
In various institutions for adults as well as for children,where the library has been a mere collection of books that counted for little or nothing in the daily life of the institution,storytelling is making the books of living interest,and is giving to children,and to grown men and women,new sources of pleasure by taking them out of themselves and beyond the limitations of a prescribed and monotonous existence.Just as the games and folk dances are making their contribution to institutional life,so storytelling is bringing the play spirit in literature to those whose imaginations have been starved by long years of neglect,and is showing that what is needed is not an occasional entertainment,but the joy of possessing literature itself.
Professional storytellers who have recently visited towns and cities of the Pacific Coast,the Middle-Western,the Southern,and the Eastern States,not covered by this report,bear testimony to an interest in storytelling that seems to be as genuine as it is widespread.It is apparent that more thought is being given to the subject than ever before.Wherever storytelling has been introduced by a "born storyteller"who has succeeded in kindling sparks of local talent capable of sustaining interest and accomplishing results,storytelling is bound to be a success.All reports testify to the need of a well defined plan for storytelling related to the purpose and the aims of the institution which undertakes it,and to the varying capacities and temperaments of the persons who are to carry it on.
