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 Child as Story-Makerl 

Kay Stone 

When I was five, my parents tell me, I regaled them with rambling, 
disjointed stories of my adventures with Snaky the Rattlesnake, my 
"invisible" friend. My mother described how amazed she was that a 
small child could spin out such involved narratives. I assumed that 
my older brother had found other ways to express his creativity—but 
now I wonder. 

Shortly after my first child began spontaneously creating his 
own original stories at roughly the same age—five—I heard a 
presentation on children's stories by Brian Sutton-Smith.2 I began to 
understand that I was not, after all, a child prodigy, but merely 
passing through an exciting developmental stage of childhood that 
we all experience, in one way or another. I suppose my brother must 
have kept his stories to himself. 

In the early 1980s two particular storytelling incidents with my 
second child, Rachel, excited my curiosity as a folklorist with a 
primary interest in adults as story-makers. In order to document 
Rachel's stories, I had to shift roles from mother to scholar: while 
listening to and recording the stories and later preparing academic 
papers on them, I was aware that ethical concerns entered the 
situation. The delicate balance between my position as subjective 
parent and objective scholar colors the background of this writing. 

There are already studies of children at various ages telling 
stories: these present a broad spectrum of ages and genres, the 
emphasis being on the development of verbal skills (See Sutton-
Smith; Pitcher and Prelinger; Chukovsky). Each of these studies has 
been carefully conceived and carried out, and each includes abun-
dant examples gathered from dozens of children over a stretch of 
time. Sutton-Smith examines the developmental stages of children as 
verbal artists, while Pitcher/Prelinger and Chukovsky emphasize 
psychological interpretations. Chukovsky in particular insists that 
children have a deep need for fantasy and create their own even in 
the absence of external literary models. He also notes what he calls 
"the linguistic genius" of the child, who does not merely copy any 
adult models that are available but instead "introduces critical 
evaluation, analysis, and control," even as early as two years of age 
(Chukovsky 9). 

Obviously such conscientious approaches are needed for any 
meaningful generalizations to be made on children as storytellers. 
The stories I offer here, in contrast, were told by one child over a 
very limited time period in an uncontrolled environment. This 
serendipi- 

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Stone 

tous collecting was not part of a planned study, nor central to my overall 
work on folk narratives. My modest intent was to describe how one young 
teller composed two narratives using diverse elements and how she herself re-
sponded to these events. However, the question of ethics, as relevant to 
incidental collecting as it is to other contexts, sheds new light on this topic. 

I have been acutely aware of my accountability as a folklorist, as well as 
a parent, in using stories that are by right the property of the teller. When I 
was asked to contribute a paper to a recent folklore panel on ethics, "The 
Folklorist's Responsibility to the Child," I thought immediately of my earlier 
descriptions of Rachel's storytelling. The result is a re-view of the context and 
process of a child's story-making and the complexities of interaction between 
folklorist and informant. In working with children we need to be respectfully 
aware of ethical concerns that arise from our "objective" scholarship. What is 
this folklorist's responsibility to this child, and how was it negotiated in the 
two-year period covered by Rachel's storytelling activities? 

From the beginning I asked her permission to record the stories and to 
use them as part of my research. I cannot take full credit for this, since Rachel 
herself was acutely aware that these stories "belonged" to her and reminded 
me of this fact every time the matter arose. But at age five she had only the 
vaguest notion of what it meant to use her material for academic research. I 
was surprised-and encouraged-by Rachel's closing comment on the taped 
variant of her first story. She concludes with "That's the end," and then adds 
cheerily, "And hello to all your students." She understood even before I did 
that I was not merely recording her story as a proud parent; I had no plans to 
examine her story at that time, but I did indeed use it as an example for 
students in my folklore classes. 

The two stories I introduce here, the legend of "Loon Man and Bone 
Woman" (told at age five) and the anecdote of "The Men With Hats" (age 
seven) struck me as unusual. (The titles were chosen by Rachel.) I had just 
begun examining contemporary storytelling by adults and was sensitive to the 
dynamics of verbal creativity. I had also told folktales in a number of 
Winnipeg schools and was intrigued by occasional children willing to 
respond with stories of their own-but children did not become the focus of my 
narrative studies. Thus my initial interest in Rachel's storytelling was a 
general curiosity with no serious intent to transform her into an informant. 

I had heard many of her spontaneous creations over the years, but these 
two had qualities that awakened the folklorist in me. They were fuller in their 
development and told with greater assurance, perhaps because they were each 
based on stories that Rachel had experienced orally. Because I had also heard 
them I could see more clearly how Rachel functioned as an expressive artist, 
using or discarding elements of the originals to produce her own narratives. 

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Child as Story-Maker 

She firmly claimed them as her own creations, establishing self-conscious-
ness as an artist and also recognition of her responsibility as an entertainer. 
She was aware that she was not merely discoursing for a sympathetic ear, but 
consciously seeking to create coherent stories for which I happened to be a 
listener. This is much clearer in her second story, "The Men With Hats," told 
in the presence of an older brother and later to an adult friend. 

Let us look at each story within the context of its telling and then 
consider the ethical questions raised by publishing this article. Rachel, now 
seventeen and quite fiercely aware of her rights, has again given her full 
permission to use her material, though she asked why I was still working on 
"those old stories." 

"Loon Man and Bone Woman"3 

In 1981, I was making lunch for the two of us when Rachel began a story 
about a man who became a loon. At this age she was in the plot stage of 
storytelling discussed at length by Brian Sutton-Smith (1981). At first "Loon 
Man" seemed to resemble her other rambling tales with no fixed characters 
and a loosely connected series of events, but I soon caught the thread of a 
coherent narrative that took shape as I listened: Loon Man became a well-
defined protagonist who set off in search of his missing bird wife and 
children, stolen by Bone Woman. Aided by four intimidating giants and a 
leviathan pike, he arrived at Bone Woman's "eggloo" just in time to rescue 
his family from being cooked for supper. 

Her spontaneous narrative seemed to resemble what Sutton-Smith calls 
"folkstories," original narratives that "are not the same as folktales, but share 
common elements with them" (Sutton-Smith 1). I was intrigued by the 
literary sophistication of her story (which she very firmly claimed as her 
own) and asked if she could tell it again, not expecting her to be able to 
repeat it fully since all previous stories had been once-only events; she not 
only agreed, but permitted me to tape the retelling. I was surprised that she 
was able reproduce it accurately, and even improved on it as she went along. 
The story had a stronger beginning, a better motivated middle, and a more 
fully resolved conclusion; the characters and action remained stable, not 
shifting as I had expected. It had all the features of a completed narrative that 
had been consciously thought out, prepared, and rehearsed. 

Given the finished nature of the story and her ability to reproduce it, I 
thought she might have heard it in her kindergarten class, but when I asked 
where she had learned it, she answered with a slightly indignant tone, "I 
made it up." Her unambivalent claim to original ownership intrigued me so I 
asked how she got the ideas for the story. Without speaking she pointed to the 
wall 

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Stone 

behind me, where I found a colored print by Canadian Native artist Jackson 
Beardy. There, sure enough, was Loon Man—or more accurately, a loon who 
seemed to be battling a large fish; four domed shapes sat above them on the 
top left of the print, but there was no sign of giants or of Bone Woman and 
her "eggloo." She explained that the four domes were where the giants lived 
(in fact they are symbolic thunder-clouds in Beardy's print) and that Bone 
Woman and her house had been destroyed by Loon Man, so they were not in 
the picture. 

But if the giants and Bone Woman were absent from the print, did they 
spring from her imagination or from an outside source? When I asked, she 
reminded me that we had seen a puppet play based on the Inuit legend of 
"Kivioq" in which a hunter marries a bird woman who flies away one day. 
He follows after her and meets a threatening giant, a huge pike, and a 
cannibalistic Bee Woman, whom he defeats.4 Rachel told me that she had not 
enjoyed the play because it was "too scary" and added, "my story was better." 
Why? Because it had no puppets, and "it had a better ending." Rachel 
reunites Loon Man and his family, while in the puppet play Kivioq's Goose 
Wife and children refuse to return with him. Rachel's variant was also less 
violent and threatening without losing dramatic impact. 

In sorting out how she composed and repeated her story on the spot by 
imaginatively bringing together an Inuit legend, a Cree print, and her own 
reworking of plot, character, and motivation, I was able to see in miniature 
the interaction of text, texture, and context. With her permission I presented a 
paper at the 1984 American Folklore Society meeting ("At Home in the 
Field"), came home, and filed it away. 

"The Men With Hats" 

Two years later I again happened to be present when Rachel tried a very 
different kind of story, a narrative joke. A joke is a very challenging genre, as 
its success depends on the precision of the wording and the successful 
delivery of the punch line. Up to this time Rachel had only told simple one-
line jokes with no plot line to remember. 

In the spring of 1984 a few adult friends gathered at our home for an 
informal afternoon of conversation and joke-telling. Rachel, age seven, 
moved in and out of the room as she went about her own affairs. I was not 
aware that she was even present when the following joke was told by a 
woman already known in our circle as an irreverent jokester:5 

Two Sikhs wearing turbans are challenged at Heaven's gates 
by St. Peter, who asks each, separately, a question. The first is 
asked what would happen if he lost one eye and then the other, 

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Child as Story-Maker 

to which he responds that he would be half blind and then totally 
blind. St. Peter allows him to enter Heaven, then questions the 
second man about what would happen if he lost one ear and then 
the other. He responds (having heard the first answers but not the 
questions) that he would be half blind and then totally blind—
because his turban would slip down over one eye and then the 
other. St Peter, impressed, lets him in as well. 

I was putting Rachel to bed that night, a time when we often shared 
casual stories, when she offered to tell the joke "about the men with hats." 
She surprised me by repeating the joke with absolute accuracy, making only 
one change from exotic turbans to prosaic hats. I complimented her on her 
good memory and said good night. 

The next morning she offered to tell "that joke" again before going off to 
school, this time in the presence of her older brother who was not normally 
appreciative of her attempts at joke-telling. As I prepared breakfast, she 
introduced an entirely original joke based on the pattern of the one she heard 
the previous day:6 

There were two kids getting ready for school and their 
mother said, "I want to ask you two questions first. You first"  
So the first boy went in [to the kitchen] and the mother said, 
"What would happen if I gave you only half your breakfast?" "I'd 
be half hungry." "So, what if I didn't give you any breakfast?" "I'd 
be totally hungry." "O.K., you can go." "Just a minute. I want to 
say bye to my brother." "So she let him." So he went in and he 
whispered, "The first answer is half hungry and the second one is 
totally hungry. Bye!" So then the mother asked the second one, 
"What would happen if I turned the radio down?" "I'd be half 
hungry." "Well what would happen if I turned it all the way off?" 
"I'd be totally hungry." "Are you crazy? Why would you be 
hungry?" "Well, if you were so busy turning the radio on and off 
you wouldn't have time to make me breakfast" So she let him go 
too. 

My son and I both laughed, and Rachel seemed embarrassed by the total 
success of her performance, responding by saying, "that was just a silly 
joke." 

When they left for school, I sat down and wrote out her text, and thought 
again of "Loon Man and Bone Woman," also told while I was preparing a 
meal-that is, a casual rather than a formal setting, with my attention directed 
elsewhere rather than focused on her. As folklorist rather than mother, I 
noted that she was able to change the text without losing the original joke 
pattern, but at this point I had nothing more to say about the process. 

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Stone 

It took a third and unsuccessful retelling of this joke to fully reveal her 
understanding of her own creativity and to bring my folkloric curiosity to full 
life. Some weeks after the breakfast performance she was sitting with me and 
another friend, a man whom she felt entirely comfortable with and whom she 
knew to be a joke teller himself. He had just told a joke, and she uncharac-
teristically offered another; "Here's one I made up," she said proudly, 
apparently buoyed up by her previous successes. She used the kitchen setting 
again and remembered that the success of the joke depended on the questions 
and answers: 

This mother is making breakfast for her two kids, I think, and she 
had to ask them some questions before they went to school. So 
she said to one, "What would you do if I made you stay home 
from school today?" "I'd be dumb." "Well what if I made you stay 
home for a whole week?" "I'd be dumber." [The teller realizes 
that she will have difficulty developing this question and reveals 
her discomfort nonverbally by pausing, grimacing, shifting her 
weight, as she tries to figure out what to say next.] 

Well, so she says, "You can go to school now." "I have to 
tell my brother something first," and he runs into the living room 
and says "The answers are dumb and dumber." And he goes 
away. So then she asks the other kid, "What would happen if I 
took away your books?" "I'd be dumb." "What would happen if I 
took away your pen and paper?" "I'd be dumber." 

She does not bother to end the joke with the "You can go now" closing, but 
simply stops, pauses, and comments, "Well, that wasn't very good, was it!" 
This was a rhetorical rather than an actual question, and we ALL laughed—-
not at the joke but at her acknowledgment of its failure. 

I realized that her failure—and her recognition of it—was a clearer 
demonstration of creativity than her successes had been. I could see how she 
was using structure to build her new narrative, and I also understood how she 
had matured as a performer by accepting her responsibility to complete the 
story even when she understood that it was not going to work-and by 
gracefully acknowledging her failure. 

Later that year I asked her permission to use these three storytelling 
events for a paper to be given at the Canadian folklore meeting, and she 
agreed-after asking me who would be there and ascertaining that no one she 
knew would hear her joke.7 

My initial interest was in Rachel's gradual recognition of herself as a 
conscious performer with a responsibility to herself as artist and to her 
listeners as entertainer. Now, several years later, I have tried to reframe these 
experiences with the idea of addressing the ethical problems raised in this 

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Child as Story-Maker 

Panel—MY responsibility to HER. I began by showing Rachel, now 17, the 
abstract for the 1993 AFS panel and asking her to read what I'd written up to 
that point, explaining that she had complete control over what was to be 
included (I had already received permission to reuse the stories). I also asked 
her to add her own responses. It was my intention to encourage her to be an 
active collaborator rather than a passive informant. She promised to read what 
I had written, but never went beyond the abstract. "That's old stuff," she said 
when I urged her to give me a response. 

It has been helpful for me to reframe my work with Rachel in this altered 
perspective: if I had not been aware of the significance of our subtle role 
shifts from child and mother to informant and folklorist, it would have been 
impossible to reframe the present article. 

It has also been a challenge to maintain perspective because of the split 
focus of this article. On one hand it is an example of oral creativity, and on 
the other it is a commentary on ethical relations between researcher and child. 
There is obviously an advantage to being parent, teacher, or anyone else who 
is in steady contact with children on a long term basis. The child is familiar as 
both a human being and a creative, expressive individual. This is a subjective 
position given the privileged connections between the adult and the child. On 
the other hand, an academic researcher who may see a child only a few times 
has the advantage of objectivity, since personal connections are secondary to 
research interests. Scholarly training prepares the viewer to examine the 
young artists and what they create without the potential drawbacks of 
subjective personal relationships. 

I have enjoyed the challenge of attempting to be both parent and 
researcher, trying to find a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. What 
has guided me is the central issue of ethics, which can be even more critical 
when one is dealing with children who are close and familiar. It is hardly a 
unique situation, given the ground-breaking work of father/scholar Piaget, but 
the central issue remains the same: the child and the creations of the child 
must be as fully respected and protected from exploitation as those of any 
adult. As I noted earlier, I cannot take full credit for treating Rachel and her 
stories with consistent respect; she seemed to understand from the very 
beginning that her voice was her own possession and managed to let me 
know that she was aware of her rights. If she had at any point withdrawn her 
permission, there would be no article. 

I leave Rachel's stories with a sense of incompletion similar to that 
expressed by Pitcher and Prelinger, who conclude: 

We feel vividly how our analyses and interpretations have fallen 
short of doing justice to or even comprehending the complexity, 

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Stone 

the richness, and the literary quality, poetry, and beauty which 
many of the stories contain (240). 

*** 

As I wrote these final words and asked again if Rachel would read this 
paper and comment, she said, with more than a touch of 17-year-old sarcasm, 
"I don't need to read this again—I made the stories." She added that she 
expected a percentage of any royalties I received. While in this case it was a 
deliberately ironic request (she has learned that academic royalties are not 
impressive), it might have been less ironic if I were indeed earning money 
from a book of children's folklore. 

"And," Rachel might add, "hello to all your students." 

University of Winnipeg 
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 

Notes 

1. This is a slightly revised version of the paper I presented at the 1993 AFS 
meeting in Eugene, Oregon. I am indebted to C.W. Sullivan III for requesting it; and 
also to Mary Louise Chown, Nathaniel Stone, and Carol McGirr for their responsive 
readings. 

2. By coincidence Sutton-Smith's presentation was at the 1976 AFS meeting in 
Philadelphia, which I attended with three-month-old Rachel, the subject of the present 
article. Sutton-Smith's paper, "Structural Parallels Between Children's Creative 
Activity and Children's Folklore," seems to be a bridge between his initial work on 
children's games and play and his later work on storytelling by children. 

3. The title was suggested by Rachel after the fact, in recognition that the taped 
telling had become a formal rather than a casual storytelling event and seemed, to her, 
to require a proper title. 

4. "Kivioq" was performed by the Manitoba Puppet Theatre in 1981, with 
realistic and accurately costumed puppets. It was not in any way a "precious" or 
diminished telling of a complex and challenging Inuit legend. Rachel was not the only 
young child in the audience who found it disturbing. 

5. Since this was an informal storytelling event the joke was not recorded. It is 
summarized from memory and checked with the original teller, who also gave her 
permission to include it here. 
 6. I wrote it down immediately after she left for school, trying to recreate her 
exact wording as well as I could and checking it with her on her return. 
 7. "The End of the Story" was presented at the annual meeting of the Folklore 
Studies Association of Canada in Winnipeg in 1984. 

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Child as Story-Maker 

Works Cited 

Chukovsky, Kornei. From Two to Five. Translated from the 1925 Russian edition, 
Malen’kie deti (Little Children), by Miriam Norton. Berkeley and Los Angeles: 
U of California P, 1965. 

Pitcher, Evelyn Goodenough, and Ernst Prelinger. Children Tell Stories. New York: 
 International UP, Inc., 1963. 
Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Folkstories of Children. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania 
 P. 1981. 

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