Here and Now Story Book Part 4

"Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!"

I have never known the child who did not respond to Kipling's engine song:

"With a michnai-ghignai-shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!"

Every child creates these wonderful sound interpretations of the world.

We smile a smile of indulgence when we hear them. And then we forget them! Cannot we seize some of them however imperfectly and learn to build them into the structure of our stories? It was more or less this kind of thing that I had in mind in writing Marni's stories and "The Room with the Window Looking Out Upon the Garden" which as I have said elsewhere are types to be told rather than narratives to be read. And I feel sure if we could once make a beginning that the children themselves would soon take the matter into their own hands and create their own building blocks.

For children are primarily creators. They do not willingly nor for long maintain the pa.s.sive role. This should be reckoned with in stories and not merely as a concession to restless children but as a real aid to the story. An active role should be provided for the children somewhere within every story until the children are old enough to have a genuinely impersonal interest in things and events and until they do not need a motor expression of their thoughts. For as I have already said, up to that age,--and it is for psychologists to say when that age is,--children think in terms of themselves expressed through their own activities. This active role should be used not merely as a safety valve of expression to keep the child a patient listener, but as a tool by which he may become aware of the form of thought and language. It is interesting that the children to whom these stories have been read, have seized upon the rhyme refrains as their own and after a few readings have joined in saying them as though this were their natural portion.

It is with this hope that I have tried to make the refrains not mere interludes in the story, as they usually are, but the real skeleton, the intrinsic thought pattern, the fundamental design. In "How the Singing Water Gets to the Tub" and "How Spot Found a Home," for instance, the refrains taken by themselves out of the context, tell the whole story.

It is too soon to say, but I am strong in the hope that through relish for this kind of active partic.i.p.ation in written stories, a small child may become captivated by the play side of the stories as opposed to the content and so turn to language as play material in which to fas.h.i.+on patterns of his own.

For the sake of a.n.a.lysis, I have treated content and form separately.

But I am keenly aware that the divorce of the two is what has made our stories for children so unsatisfactory. We have good ideas told without charm of design; and we have meaningless patterns which tickle the ear for the moment but fade because they spring from no real thought.

Literature is only achieved when the thought pattern and the language pattern exactly fit. A refrain for the mere sake of recurrent jingle, that has no genuine no essential recurrence in the thought, is a trick.

If the pattern does not help the thought and the thought suggest the pattern, there is something wrong. It is an artifice, not art. This matching of content and form is nothing new. It is and always has been the basis of good literature. The task that is new is to find thought sequences, thought relations which are truly childlike and the language design which is really appropriate to them,--to make both content and form the child's.

As I said at the beginning, so must I say at the end. These stories are experiments, experiments both in content and form. To have any value they must be treated as such. The theses underlying them have been stated for brevity's sake only in didactic form. In reality, they lie in my mind as open questions urgently in need of answers. But I do not hope much from the answers of adults,--from the deaf and blind writers to the hearing and seeing children. The answers must come from the children themselves. We must listen to children's speech, to their casual everyday expressions. We must gather children's stories. Mothers and teachers everywhere should be making these precious records. We must study them not merely as showing what a child is thinking, but the _way_ he is thinking and the way he is enjoying. It is the hope that these stories may be tried out with children, the hope of reaching others who may be watching and listening and working along these lines, the hope that we may gather records of children's stories which will become a basis for a real literature, the hope that somewhere among grown-ups we may find an ear still sensitive to hear and an eye still fresh to see,--it is this hope that has given me the courage to expose these pitifully inadequate adult efforts to speak with little children in their own language. Some one must dare, if only to give courage to the better equipped. And if we dare enough, I am sure the children will come to our rescue. If we let them, they will lead us. Whatever these stories hold of merit or of suggestiveness is due to the inspiration and tolerance of the courageous group of workers in the City and Country School and in the Bureau of Educational Experiments and in particular to Caroline Pratt without whom these stories would never have been dreamed or written; and above all to the children themselves, for whom the stories were written and to whom they have been read, both in the laboratory school and in my own home. To those then, who wish to follow the lead of little children, to those who have the curiosity to know into what new paths of literature children's interest and children's spontaneous expression of those interests will lead, and to the children themselves, I send these stories.

LUCY SPRAGUE MITCh.e.l.l.

New York City July, 1921.

MARNI TAKES A RIDE IN A WAGON

The refrains in this story were first made up during the actual ride.

Later they served to recall the experience with vividness. This story is given only as a type which any one may use when helping a two-year-old to live over an experience.

MARNI TAKES A RIDE IN A WAGON

One day Marni went for a ride. Little Aa, he climbed into Sprague's wagon and Marni, she climbed in behind him. Then Mother took the handle and she began to pull the wagon with little Aa and Marni in it. And Mother she went:

Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, _And_ Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog!

And the wheels, they went, (with motion of hands):

Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, _And_ Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round!

And then Mother was tired. So she stopped. And Marni said, "Whoa, horsie!"

Then Little Aa said, "Ugh, ugh!" for he wanted to go.

But Marni said, "Get up, horsie!" for she wanted to go too. So Mother took hold of the handle and went:

Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, _And_ Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog!

And the wheels they went:

Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, _And_ Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round!

And then Mother was tired. So she stopped, and Marni said, "Whoa, horsie!"

Then Little Aa said, "Ugh, ugh!" for he wanted to go. But Marni said "Get up, horsie!" for she wanted to go too. So Mother took hold of the handle and went,

Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, _And_ Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog, jog, jog, jog, Jog!

And the wheels they went:

Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, _And_ Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round, round, round, round, Round!

And then Mother was very, _very_ tired. So she stopped. And Marni said, "Whoa, horsie!"

Then Little Aa said, "Ugh, ugh!" for he wanted to go again. But Marni said "Get up, horsie!" for she wanted to go too. But Mother she was very, _very_, VERY tired. She had jogged, jogged, jogged so long and made the wheels go round, round, round, round, so much! So she said, "The ride is all over!" Then Little Aa climbed down out of the wagon and Marni climbed down out of the wagon. And Marni said, "Goodbye, wagon!"

and ran away!

MARNI GETS DRESSED IN THE MORNING

This story, obviously, is for a particular little girl. It is told in the terms of her own experience, of her own environment, and of her own observations. It is nothing more or less than the living over in rhythmic form of the daily routine of her morning dressing. Her story remarks are either literal quotations or adaptations of her actual every day responses. The little verse refrains are the type of thing almost anyone can improvise. I have found that any simple statement about a familiar object or act told (or sung) with a kind of ceremonious attention and with an obvious and simple rhythm, enthralls a two-year-old. The little girl for whom this story was written began embryonic stories before her second birthday. The water-soap-sponge episode is an adaptation of one of her first narrative forms. This story is meant merely as a suggestion of the way almost anyone can make language an every day plaything to the small child she is caring for.

MARNI GETS DRESSED IN THE MORNING

Once there was a little girl and her name was Marni Moo. Marni used to sleep in a little bed in mother's room. In the morning Marni would wake up and she would say "h.e.l.lo, Mother." And then in a minute she would say, "I want to get up."

And mother would say:

"Hoohoo, Marni Moo.

I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming for you."

Then mother would get up and she'd come over and she'd unfasten the blanket and she'd take little Marni Moo in her arms and she'd walk into Marni's bath-room and she'd take off Marni's nightgown and Marni's s.h.i.+rt. And then she'd get a little basin, and she'd put some water in it, and she'd get some soap and she'd get a sponge and she'd wash little Marni Moo. She'd wash Marni's face and then she'd wash Marni's hands, and Marni would put one hand in the basin and she'd splash the water like this:-- Then she'd put another hand in the basin and she'd splash the water like this:-- Then mother would wipe both hands and she'd throw the water down the sink and she'd put away the soap and the sponge. And Marni would watch mother and then she'd say:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Where water?