From Where Children Grow, this week’s featured book (ebook free for subscribers).

A good storyteller is a precious boon. Blessed is the circle of children that can enjoy him; his influence is great and ennobling; the more so, the less he seems to aim at this. With high esteem and full of respect I greet a genuine storyteller; with intense gratitude I grasp him by the hand. However, better greeting than mine is his lot; behold the joyful faces, the sparkling eyes, the merry shouts that welcome him; see the blooming circle of delighted children crowd around him, like a wreath of fresh flowers and branches around the bard of joy and delight!footnote

Who fails to remember the keen desire that filled the heart, more particularly in the later years of childhood, when beholding old walls and towers on hills and on the roadside – to hear others give accounts of these things, of their time and their causes? Who has not at such times noticed a vague, undefinable feeling that at some time these things themselves could and would give an account of themselves and their time?

And who, judging by experience and knowledge, can furnish these accounts, if not those who lived before – the elders? That these might tell us is our earnest wish; and thus there develops in children the desire and craving for tales, legends, and all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts. This craving, especially in its first appearance, is very intense; so much so, that, when others fail to gratify it, the children seek to gratify it themselves, particularly on days of leisure, and in times when the regular employments of the day are ended.

Who has not been filled with respect when noticing a group of children gathered around one whom a good memory and a lively imagination have designated as their storyteller? How attentively they all listen when his story gratifies their favorite wish and confirms their judgment by its plot and incidents – in short, when it brings before them words and deeds in harmony with their own thoughts and feelings!footnote

Illustration by Warwick Goble. ClassicStock / Alamy Stock Photo.

Children are attracted to the legend and fairy tale, not by the varied and colorful forms that move about in them, but by their spiritual life, which furnishes children with a measure for their own life and spirit.footnote

Though the story may present strange people and strange lands, other times and other manners, yet in it the hearer seeks and finds an image of himself, even if no one else could say, “That is like you.”footnote

This is the chief reason why children are so fond of stories, legends, and tales; the more so when these are told as having actually occurred at some time, or as lying within the reach of probability, for which, however, there are scarcely any limits for a child.

The power that has scarcely germinated in children’s minds is seen by them in the legend or tale, a perfect plant filled with the most delicious blossoms and fruits. The very remoteness of the comparison with their own vague hopes expands heart and soul, strengthens the mind, unfolds life in freedom and power.footnote

Footnotes

1. Fanny Chapin, ed., Friedrich Froebel Yearbook: Compiled from the Writings of Friedrich Froebel (Kindergarten Literature Co., 1894), 129–130.
2. Friedrich Froebel, The Education of Man, translated and annotated by W. N. Hailmann (1887), 115–116.
3. Froebel, The Education of Man, 306.
4. S. S. F. Fletcher and J. Welton, trans., Froebel’s Chief Writings on Education (Longmans, Green & Co, 1912), 149.
5. Froebel, The Education of Man, 306.