During the story-telling what is the part the child has to play?  The part of the child in all this may be to listen to the story because he has some problem of his own to work out through the literature, because he has some purpose of his own in listening, because he enjoys the story and wishes to find out what there is in it, or because he expects it to show him what he may afterwards wish to do with it.  In any case the child’s part is to see the characters and what they do, to follow the sequence of the tale, and to realize the life of the story through the telling.  He may have something to say about the story at the close of the telling, he may wish to compare its motifs with similar motifs in other tales, or he may wish to talk about the life exhibited by the story.  The various studies of the curriculum every day are following more closely the Greek ideal and giving the child daily exercise to keep the channels of expression free and open.  And when the well-selected fairy tale which is art is told, through imitation and invention it awakens in the child the art-impulse and tends to carry him from appreciation to expression.  If before the telling the story-teller has asked herself, “What variety of creative reaction will this tale arouse in the child?” and if she has told the story in the way to bring forward the best possibility for creative reaction the nature of the tale affords, she will help to make clear to the child what he himself will want to do with the story.  She will help him to see a way to use the story to enter into his everyday life.  The return of creative reaction possible to the child will be that in harmony with his natural instincts or large general interests.  These instincts, as indicated by Professor John Dewey, in The School and Society, are:—­

(1) the instinct of conversation or communication;

(2) the instinct of inquiry or finding out things;

(3) the instinct of construction or making things; and

(4) the instinct of artistic expression or [of imitating and
combining things].

(1) The instinct of conversation.  The little child likes to talk.  If you have ever listened to a little girl of five artlessly proceeding to tell a story, such as Little Black Sambo, which she had gathered from looking at a neighbor’s book, but which she had not yet mastered sufficiently to grasp its central theme, reiterating the particular incidents with the enthusiasm and joy and narrative tone of the story-teller, you realized how the child likes to talk.  For there appeared the charm of the story-telling mode distinct from the story it told.

Because of this instinct of conversation one form of creative reaction may be language expression.  The oral reproduction of the story re-experiences the story anew.  The teacher may help here by creating a situation for the re-telling.  A teacher might put a little foreign boy through rapid paces in learning English by selecting a story like The Sparrow and the Crow and by managing that in the re-telling the little foreigner would be the Crow who makes the repetitive speeches, who must go to the Pond and say:—­