11 Aug / The Girl Who Loved Danger: A Steve Light Storybox by Steve Light
As the e-publishing world is shrinking our stories into little mobile devices, storyteller, teacher, and author Steve Light brings back some delightful heft with his new Storybox collection that features classic tales from around the world that your youngest readers can bring immediately to life … any way they choose!
One day in class, Light acted out Hansel and Gretel to his students using two figures he had carved; the children responded with “‘Where is the witch, the cottage, and the father?'” So Light “‘went home, carved all the other characters and props, put them in a wooden box, painted a ‘title’ on the box, and Storyboxes were born.'” Light currently has four available storyboxes: Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Little One Inch (originally a Japanese tale), and The Girl Who Loved Danger pictured here.
Each storybox slides open to a colorful booklet, in which Light offers his version of a story as a starting point: “I have changed them to how I like to tell a story. That is the liberty each storyteller is given.” Dig underneath, and your little ones will find all the props and tools to recreate the story or even make up their own. Light’s all-in-one goal is clearly to encourage and enable children’s imaginations: “The nature of a story is to excite, amaze, evoke thoughts and question and kindle a curiosity of the unknown.”
In this version of The Girl Who Loved Danger, a morality tale originally from the Congo, a curious little girl cannot give up her love of dangerous adventure. Warned about a deadly monster down by the lake, of course, she goes to find it. Along the way, she meets her ancestor bird from whom she receives a lucky feather. She gets swallowed up, as does a helpful man from her village, and then even her parents! Having that feather does indeed prove fortuitous, and the little girl comes up with an ingenious way to make friends with the hungry monster. Clever girl power all the way!
Intrigued? Put away the electronics, and think outside this imaginative box …
Readers: Children
Published: 2012