Cooking Up a Story: Recipes for storytime with young children

By Mary Medlicott

(Featherstone Education, 14.95)

Reviewed by Miranda Walker, playwork trainer and owner of Playtime Out of School Club and ABC Day Nursery in Cullompton, Devon Mary Medlicott has 25 years of storytelling experience. In this book she shares her techniques and tips, along with specially prepared stories. Some are Mary's own original tales, while others are re-workings of traditional plots, ideas and themes.

The book states that stories can give children 'what they need to grow up healthy - food for the imagination, nourishment for the emotions and a chance to make sense of the world in which we live'. Consequently, it is written in the style of a recipe book.

From the 'menu' you can select 'appetisers' in the form of joining-in chants and games for getting children actively involved in storytime; and 'side dishes' consisting of action rhymes, stories and chants, which can be mixed and matched with the 'main courses'. The latter are stories for telling without the book, and suggestions for follow-up activities.

The author does not advocate excluding books from storytime, but she does encourage practitioners to place equal emphasis on telling stories without books, allowing 'plenty of space for imaginative listening, and lots of room for participation'.

The balance of storytelling hints and suggestions with actual stories to tell children is just right. I recommend this book since, as Mary Medlicott says, 'Storytime is too important to be neglected or treated as just another chore.'