The tale of a frog that wanted to become a singer, a peanut butter and a jelly fish who finally make friends with a crab and more endearing stories of animals from faraway lands were brought alive at a storytelling event organised by Ashvattha at Pages The Bookshop this week. Storyteller Shyla Kurma along with her six students regaled the audience with stories, delivered with gripping narration and took the little ones who gathered at the venue to a fairytale land.
Storytelling can be a effective tool to present ideas as well as increase a child’s learning readiness. It was with this idea Kurma, a trained storyteller from Kathalaya, Bangalore, and a member of Red International Storytelling Network, organised the session.
Assisting her were her team of students and storyteller Priya Gopalakrishnan, who has been in the field for the past couple of years.
Folk tales from around the world kept the audience captivated with expressive narrations and voice modulations of the storytellers.
Children as small as two years old till teenagers participated in the event.
“I eventually want to make these storytelling sessions a monthly feature. The goal is to involve the children as well as young mothers to participate in these events,” says Kurma.
According to her, pushing creative boundaries and using characters that appeal to the children the most make for compelling storytelling sessions.
Hitesh Kandarpa, 14, loves to narrate stories with a happy-ending. “It feels so wonderful to see the smiles on the faces of the audience,” says the class nine student.
Kandarpa narrated the tale of the lion with the red eyes at the storytelling event.
According to Garima Rathi, while books are a great source for stories, simply reading them out to a child cannot create the same experience as when the story is told in an engaging manner.
“It was the first experience of storytelling for my two and half year old toddler and he thoroughly enjoyed the animated versions of the stories. The stories illuminated the imaginative world of the children,” Rathi says.
