Cultivating Young Minds & Preserving Family History Through Storytelling with M. G. Lorraine | National Tell A Story Day, April 27, 2025

For a writer / author, a day that is dedicated to telling a story is like a whole day for you to openly and willingly to indulge in your favorite thing: CREATING STORIES! After all, telling a story requires the creation of characters, worlds, and quests. The type of story is open to the world of possibilities. Options are to numerous to ponder and in order to tell the story, you have to choose all of those things.

When I’m writing and creating actual characters, I use the character sheets to help flush them out and give them depth. If I am orally telling the story, then I have to assess my audience and the time until wiggling begins and ruins the opportunity for engagement. Once this has been figured out, the telling begins.

Since the beginning of time, history was passed down from the tribal storytellers through oral history. Daniela Parkes makes an excellent timeline in her blog. Melissa Mendoza has another great reference: The Evolution of Storytelling (Source).

As we honor the history and legacy of my favorite activity - creating a good story to tell - I am looking at ways to help my nieces, nephews, and grandchildren tell their own stories. I’m all too aware that we often lose the stories and history of those we love and that are around us every day because we no longer listening to the tales of the storyteller.

Every day it becomes more important to prevent the loss of these family tales. My daughter bought for her and I an incredible book called "Like Mother, Like Daughter: A Discovery Journal For The Two Of Us” (Amazon). This book helps me pass down some of my stories. There are other options to preserve your stories, too. With books like "An Oral History - Preserve Your Story" by Peter Pauper Press, you just grab your phone or voice recorder and begin saving stories. This allows you to visit with your loved ones and collect to share at the same time.

Like Mother, Like Daughter A Discover Journal

An Oral History on Amazon

The Storymatic - A Storytelling Game as listed on Amazon

One of my favorite projects in development is coming out this fall! For the last several months I have been working with kid co-authors on two different sets of stories! The first series is early reader chapter books, written with my great niece and nephew and the stories are filled with their imagination. The second series is for tween/intermediate age and is being written with two great nieces. We hope to have them on the shelves before the holidays.

All of these co-authors are storytellers and writers in their own right, but bringing their creativity and craft to the public has been a blast. I can't wait to share these books with a whole new group of readers and their friends. No matter whether you are reading the story, crafting the story, or nurturing young storytellers, grab a book, watch a movie or tell your own story today because it’s National Tell-A-Story-Day and every one of us has a story to tell.

Until next time,

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