Mary Medlicott, Storyteller and Author - Storyworks

Archive for the ‘Secondary-age’ Category

Storytelling Starters ~ On the journey

Saturday, March 31st, 2018


Meantime: School Librarian


Plus: a good book for storytellers




An inspiring story: The Blind Little Sister











One way a story can make its mark:


A riddle to end:


Question: Why do anarchists prefer herbal tea?

Answer: Because proper tea (property) is theft.


Storytelling Starters ~ Looking up

Saturday, May 27th, 2017


The story:


Storytelling Starters ~ Old, Bold, Gutsy and Wise

Saturday, May 6th, 2017

Inuit womanI don’t know much about Alaska. One thing I do know, however, is an extraordinary story about two old women who were abandoned by their people in the ice and snow of a very hard winter. The story tells how these two women survived and the enormous wisdom they showed when their people, filled with shame at what they’d done, eventually searched them out to find that they were still alive. 

Two Old Women has been retold in print by Velma Wallis, a woman who’d heard it told many times as a child. Is it a legend or is it true? In a way, the question is irrelevant. I think the story has a striking relevance for us today. It insists that skills that have been learned in the past and the experience that is gained over a life-time can be of life-saving value, reviving memory,  self-respect and determination.

Old, Bold, Gutsy and Wise:

As guest storyteller for the evening, I’ll be telling this story this coming Wednesday at Fishguard Storytelling/Straeon Gwaun, the monthly story club organised by Deborah Winter at Pepper’s in West Street in Fishguard, North Pembrokeshire. The only other time I’ve told it was years ago at a Secondary School in Chelmsford where one of the main responses of my audience was astonishment at hearing of a world and a time where there were no computers and no mobile phones and where the two old women, when abandoned, had no contact with anyone at all other than each other. (more…)

Storytelling Starters ~ Questions

Saturday, September 24th, 2016

Here’s a question. What would you do if someone you thought of as a very good friend brought you a present of two identical apples and when you gavMany apples compresse one of these apples to your dog (who loved apples), your dog instantly fell down dead? What would you do with the other apple?

That is the question which the prince in The Parrot and the Tree of Life is obliged to answer.

The Parrot and the Tree of Life:

The prince in the story did not hesitate for a moment. He answered the question without hesitation by taking  hold of the friend and wringing her neck. Then he took hold of the second apple and threw it out onto the grass outside his throne room, banning anyone from going near it.

Over the succeeding years, an apple tree grew where the second apple had fallen and this tree bore the most delicious-looking fruits. Of course none of the prince’s courtiers would eat them because they were banned from doing so. The  tree became known as The Tree of Death. However, when an aged couple who were the prince’s gardeners felt they wanted to die together, they decided to go the tree. There, they took an apple each and ate it. (more…)