As I said we have to start somewhere.. so why not start with whom I believe is THE super star of story invention when working with children?
Admittedly, I am pulling information directly from the Web about Rodari’s work because so much has already been written about him (albeit most of it in Italian) so why (re)invent the wheel?
A third question you may have is why do we start with him in this course?
I have used his work as an introduction for several digital storytelling workshops I have conducted with youths and have personal experience with the extent to which Rodari’s work has been extra-ordinarily successful in ‘setting the table’ for the workshops for folks of all ages. It has made a believer out of me that all children have a natural sense for story and, with the proper guidance, teaching them how to invent/create well-formatted stories is a very creative way to motivate them and to contextualize academic content and has also had a huge impact on their lessening their reluctance to read in general.
So,I am introducing you to Rodari and testify to his relevance to beginning this course.
Stay with me on this… it is my hope you will see what I have seen…
Translation: “Our imagination is as a part of us is as reasoning: look to fantasy as another way to look inside ourselves to find both”
From Wikipedia
Gianni Rodari (23 October 1920 – 14 April 1980) was an Italian writer and journalist, most famous for his children’s books. For his lasting contribution as a children’s writer he received the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1970 and many consider him Italy’s most important twentieth-century children’s author. His books have been translated into many languages, though few have been published in English.
Rodari was born in Omegna, a small town on Lake Orta in the province of Novara in northern Italy. His father, a baker, died when Rodari was only ten. Rodari and his two brothers, Cesare and Mario, were raised by his mother in her native village, in the province of Varese. After three years at the seminary in Seveso, Rodari received his teacher’s diploma at the age of seventeen and began to teach elementary classes in rural schools of the Varese district. He had interest in music (three years of violin lessons) and literature (discovered the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lenin and Trotsky which sharpened his critical sense).
Rodari was also an educator and activist who truly understood the power of the imaginative life. In this delightful classic — now translated into English for the first time — Rodari presents numerous and wonderful techniques for creating stories. He discusses these specific techniques in the context of the imagination, fairy tales, folk tales, children’s stories, cognitive development, and compassionate education. Gianni Rodari was one of the founders of the innovative educational approach that began in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and is now making itself felt throughout the U.S. The Grammar of Fantasy grew out of a series of informal workshops that Rodari conducted for the teachers of Reggio Emilia.
Rodari in the news
Take a look at this You Tube video. Although it is entirely in Italian and runs about nine minutes but you can get a sense of who Rodari was and his relationship with children and story within about 3 minutes into the video. We will get to experience his work directly in our first activity that follows this module.
This book focuses on how our imagination works in order to take us beyond the wall of a dull scholastic routine and into the
fascinating world of creativity. According to Rodari, ”
a word is similar to a stone thrown into a pond: while the latter produces a series of rapidly changing concentric ripples which gently stir the water-lilies as well as a child’s paper-boat, the former triggers incredibly intricate chain-reactions involving sounds and images,dreams, memories and – endlessly – other words and analogies…”
Sydney Clements Book Review
One of the most elusive characteristics of what I’ve seen in Reggio Emilia is the relationship between fantasy and reality in the daily doings there. In this book we have the theoretical basis for this easy movement between fantasy and fact. Called The Grammar of Fantasy , written in beautiful, accessible and poetic language, translated seamlessly by Jack Zipes, a teacher who wants to learn how to help children make stories has here all the tools she or he needs.
Playing with language is something that comes easily to some of us. It feels like a gift, like perfect pitch. But Gianni Rodari shows us how to invitae others into the games we play with language. He tried this out at Diana School in Reggio Emilia and gave a series of lectures there in 1972. This book tells us some of the stories he made up, but far more important shows us the process of making up stories, by oneself, in a group, and giving the tools to the children so they can do it also. Their stories are quite perfect, and, like children’s drawing and painting, have a quality which charms both adults and children in the audience.
Schools have traditionally relegated imagination to a very small place, valuing memory and attention much more highly. This book leads us into imagination. It shows us, as have Sylvia Ashton-Warner and Vivian Gussin Paley, how we can help children use their images — pictures in their minds which have importance and meaning to them — and make wonderful creations from them.
So Rodari talks about “The Fantastic Binomial” that is, the ability of the mind, given two words that normally are not related, say, streetcar and refrigerator, to make a connection, a story, that is satisfying. Children can do this too, as is illustrated in the book with stories about “light and shoes” and “dog and closet”. What would the children in your class do, if presented with such word-pairs?
And he talks about hypotheses: What if a lion walked into the police station? And “fairytale salad” What if Cinderella bumped into Tom Thumb on the way to meeting the wolf, what then?
In a chapter called “Recasting Fairy Tales” the Cinderella story is analyzed (Cinderella (A) lives in the house of her father (B) and stands in a relationship to B, different from the relationship that her stepsisters (C and D) have with B. While B, C, and D go to the palace, (E) where there is some kind of event the ball (F), A remains alone. However, thanks to the intervention of G, A, too, is able to go to E and makes an extraordinary impression on the prince (H). Etc.
Then Rodari shows us how to move further and further from the original cast. We use the structure of the Cinderella story, changing the characters and the place but keeping the SHAPE of the story, weaving it until Carlo (who replaces Cinderella as A), the Count’s stable boy, with the help of the cabin boy,( who replaces the fairy godmother) stows away on the yacht (replacing the Ball, E) taking the Count (who replaces Cinderella’s father B) and his children (C and D) on a the vacation trip (F). The yacht is shipwrecked and Carlo gives a cigarette lighter to the island’s medicine man (H) and as a result is celebrated as the god of fire.
In another section of this rich book Rodari introduces us to Propp’s cards:
A German named Propp analyzed the themes of fairy tales into their elements. Cards were made for the children, to help them construct stories. I found even the translated titles of these cards difficult, and have rewritten them in terms I think could be illustrated for English- speaking children:
1. Someone goes away from home.
2. A rule is given to that person.
3. The rule is broken.
4. The villain tries to find out what’s going on.
5. The villain receives information about his victim.
6. The villain attempts to deceive his victim.
7. The victim gets fooled and so (unwittingly) helps his enemy.
. . . Etc. (There are 31)
The children use these cards to generate stories: a father leaves the house and tells his children not to throw flower vases from the balcony onto the heads of pedestrians (1, 2, 3); a difficult task is to go to the cemetery at midnight (25) etc.
Stepping back from the specifics of the book, what we have here is a map into a world neglected in most schooling, but not at campfires nor at bedtimes in nurturant homes. We have the enchantment of story and the science of story, connected. People have made up stories for very good reasons, and need them as surely as we need food and drink. When schooling avoids storytelling, the schooling maladapts us for being human.
When Reggio children study the shadows they draw a lot of shadows — from imagination, from observation, after tracing real shadows on sidewalks etc. This is representation of experience, or representation of theory and not experience, but it is all scientific inquiry. These hypotheses, once drawn, can be compared with future experience, and found correct or incorrect or, interestingly, sometimes correct. They are, if you will, stories: the bird shadow will fly into the cage (taped bars on the wall) and back out this afternoon; things that move, like people and butterflies, have shadows that move, while things that stay still, like trees and houses, have shadows that stay still. Whether true or false, these stories help children examine their world more carefully, thinking like scientists think.
I believe in what I have come to call “hot cognition” — the driving of learning by emotional attachments or passions. Stories always engross humans, so they are rich stuff of which to make learning. They have internal logics which differ, in kind, from mathematical logic: a man changes into a cat passing under a barrier. To change back he must pass under the barrier again, from the other side. If he goes across the barrier as a cat, he must go over it, to avoid its magical properties. Do you see?
When Rodari helps us see connections between science or math and story he helps us knit our lives back together. When he helps us see how education and art come together, he helps us do our jobs well.
Rodari says:
“By using stories and those fantastic methods that produce them, we help children to enter reality through the window instead of through the door. It is more fun. Therefore, it is more useful.”
Once you are done with this information proceed to Activity #1, in Canvas Modules, which is taken right out of his book.