Conversation: Bob Hartman, children’s author and storyteller - Tale spinner learnt his magic as a preacher

Sydney
20 April 2003

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Conversation: Bob Hartman, children’s author and storyteller - Tale spinner learnt his magic as a preacher

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Bob Hartman (pictured) has a crooked grin, stretchy features, a fidgety body, loud voice and an American accent.

With childlike delight he warms to his story about feeding kangaroos and watching koalas in a wildlife park in Brisbane the day before.

“I know it’s a cliché, but doggone it, when you’ve never been to this country before, all you want to see is a kangaroo,” he smiles.

“And koalas are not what I expected. I thought they would move more.”

He imitates a dozy koala lazily trying to eat a eucalyptus leaf, and looks and sounds like he was born to entertain kids.

In fact his 12-year career as a storyteller and author of 32 children’s books (including The Wolf Who Cried Boy, see below) came out of his novel approach to preaching to adults as a Baptist minister, something he still does part time.

“The first congregation I worked with was made up of people who knew a lot of bible stories, the trick was to find a different way into the story; maybe start from a different point, or tell it from the point of view of the bad guy,” he says.

“You’d pull them in initially and then when they started to recognise the story, they were still interested enough to follow you along.”

Bob visited Australia in March as a guest of Somerset College, Brisbane, for its literary festival, and held story-building workshops in schools in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, including Our Lady of Fatima Primary School, Caringbah.

Bob, who is married and has two grown up children, believes that children learn a lot about how to live through the stories they see and hear.

Adults bear a great responsibility to share the best stories they can with children, tales that feature heroism and sacrifice; characters who are good, strong and brave and who solve problems imaginatively without resorting to violence, says Bob.

Humour is important too - if we let ourselves be silly and playful at story time we help our children, grand-children or students fall in love with reading and creating their own narratives.

Furthermore, he believes that children exposed to violence, in everyday life, on TV or anywhere, will act accordingly.

As a travelling storyteller from school to school in the US and Britain for 12 years, Bob has seen that children’s first tendency to resolve a difficult problem posed in a story is by “blowing something up”.

“I’m always trying to encourage them to find alternative ways, to be creative and think of something else that might be witty or clever or have a twist to it,” he says “You’d be amazed how often they then come up with something that’s really interesting.”Bob has been a professional storyteller since 1988 when he teamed up with his brother, a children’s theatre performer.

He says there have always been traditional storytellers in Ireland and certain parts of Scotland, but storytelling has seen a comeback in England and the US during the last 10 years.

“I think there’s always a part of society that wants to return to simplicity and traditional kinds of art and music, so why not folk communication as well?” he says.

Storytelling used to be the main way of passing on the local values, traditions and history.

“Even biblically, you discover a lot about who God is by reading the story of the people of Israel and then reading the Gospels,” says Bob.

In a way it has never really stopped because it is fundamental to the way we communicate each day.

It also continues to serve the same role of socialisation it used to, but through more sophisticated means, such as film and television.

“The difference is that the kind of story we get today is very visual whereas traditional story telling relies on the power of the word and the dynamic, the relationship that develops in the storytelling group, to create all of that which we now get given to us by visual media,” he says.

Bob also runs storytelling workshops for adults, and has trained primary school and Sunday school teachers, parents, motivational speakers and even a therapist.

That person was working with adults with severe mental disabilities, and storytelling was a way they tried to establish a connection.

“Also, in terms of therapy, sharing your story with another is one way that you come to understand your story,” says Bob.

“For example, when a person loses someone, what they want to do, time and time again, is tell you how it happened.

“I remember once when I was training to be a counsellor the professor saying, ‘Just let people talk; if they tell you the same thing a thousand times, in the telling they come to terms with it, they come to understand and get used to it’.”

Bob has great tips for kids to develop their imagination and create stories.

When he goes into a school, he invites them to create a story with him, starting with at least two characters, then a setting.

Then they have to pose a problem to be solved by the characters by the end of the story.

“I tell them that getting ideas for stories involves a certain amount of day dreaming and I always tell them not to do it during maths,” says Bob.

“The other things that writers do is they watch the world around them and sometimes you just pick up things that happen that you can kind of weave in to get a story started.”

He advises parents to go to what he calls the ‘place of play’ when they read to their children, and so inspire some creativity.

“That’s the place where stories come from.

“It’s the place they were when they were kids and they were just playing with their toys, because storytelling is a kind of play; it’s playing with images, ideas and words and with the narrative.

“If they go there and convince their kids that they are there then the whole experience is different. Because kids love to play, that’s what they’re made for.

“Then if they can come up with some silly faces and voices to bring the characters to life - if they are willing to be ridiculous with it - then that makes a big difference as well.

“As you read the story, get your child to participate. Give them something to do or say, to respond each time a phrase is repeated or something.”

Bob’s grandmother, who was also his Sunday school teacher, made up his favourite childhood stories.

He also loved CS Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Dr Seuss stories.

Some of his own made-up tales have religious themes, such as The Easter Angels.

Some don’t, such as one based on his grandmother: Aunt Mabel’s Table “about a boy who goes to his aunt’s house for dinner and all they have is cans.

“The cans aren’t labelled, so you just have to pick one, taste what’s inside, work out what it is and eat it, like a culinary Russian roulette,” he laughs.

“Kids love it because they’re horrified by the idea of eating something that disgusts them.”