Story, from fireplace to cyberspace : connecting children and narrative (Papers presented at the Allerton Park Institute held October 26-28, 1997)

Stories live everywhere, but they rarely stay in one place. Despite our attempts to classify, codify, and construe them, stories keep moving too mercurially to fit intellectual categories. Stories also shapechange. They shrink or expand depending on the listener, the medium, the time, the place, and the teller. So a storytelling conference becomes an organic experience and planning one is like lassoing an amoeba. What do you catch and how do you keep it? Or, less figuratively, what do you include and how do you preserve it? We decided on a program that incorporated both telling stories and telling about stories, both practical and theoretical approaches, both oral and literary forms, with some graphics thrown in for good measure. What's in this book is only partially what happened during the conference a little more, a little less. The papers are revised, the tellings only described.published or submitted for publicatio