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| Supporting, Encouraging,
and Challenging Fathers in Every Stage of Fatherhood
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Let'em
Know You Are Glad To Be Dad!!
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Welcome to Fatherville.com. This website is an
extension of the Fatherville organization. We are a
resource for fathers...by fathers and about fathers. We
are here to encourage and support dads as they make
their journey down the road called fatherhood..
Our mission and goal is to encourage men to become
better fathers through the exchange of ideas. This
exchange can take place in a number of ways: via our
online forum, written essays and contributed articles
from other fathers. If you are a dad there's something
here for you.
We believe that when dads communicate and relate
their personal tips, tricks and traps that all fathers
can benefit and perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls that
will occur on your
journey. | | |
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 Why Read?
What's in it for me and my child? Help your child
become a more successful reader by reading to him
OR her from the time your child is born. Research
has shown that it works better than any reading
drills, expensive pre-school programs or reading
instruction to help a child learn to read. Besides
that, it's cheap and it's fun for both parent and
child. Reading is fun!
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| Discover the Magic
All Over Again with StoryWatchers Club
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Here at
Fatherville.com I recently had the opportunity to
interview Eddie Sax. Eddie (and his wife Charlette) are
the producers of The StoryWatchers Club DVD
Series.
Fatherville: Let's
get things started. What motivated you to produce a DVD
about story telling? In other words tell us a little bit
about the vision behind creating the DVD series? What do
you want it to do or accomplish?
 Eddie
Sax: Many factors went into this. Our
background is actually not in professional storytelling
but stand-up comedy. From 1988 through 1995, we owned a
chain of stand-up comedy nightclubs throughout the
Hawaiian Islands. Some of the people who worked for us
are household names today such as George Lopez, Jeff
Foxworthy, Brad Garrett, and George Wallace. Our lives
these days are different. As home school parents of two
daughters, we've had constant exposure to many wonderful
children's educational and entertainment videos. When we
were first exposed to professional storytelling at our
local library, we were not only struck by how similar
and appealing this art form was to live stand-up, but
how it was such a ideal vehicle for teaching kids all
sorts of lessons, from culture and history, to morality
and imagination, and especially promoting literacy:
reading skills, a love for books, and writing. That's
why storytellers earn their living entertaining at
libraries and schools, festivals, museums. It's the
ultimate in
"edu-tainment."
Fatherville: How
did you decide which stories to include in the series?
You must have had many to choose from.
ES: Our first order of business
was to determine the theme of each DVD. Since
storytelling is an ideal medium to communicate many
concepts in a highly entertaining way, we had to narrow
down which topics we wanted to tackle. We settled on
Keys to Imagination -developing a child's imagination
skills, Good Character - instilling good moral values,
World Folktales - promoting global cultural respect and
diversity, Our Planet - learning about and respecting
the environment, and Christmas - little known and
entertaining tales about the holiday season. With our
topics now determined, the story search was narrowed to
a manageable level. We sought out stories that were
compelling, enchanting, and thoroughly captivating, both
funny and serious.
Fatherville:
How did you decide which story tellers to
feature?
ES: There are estimated
to be less than a thousand full-time professional
storytellers in the country, each with repertoires of
literally hours of tales. So, yes, there was a lot to
choose from. Our job was to narrow it down to the best
stories from 14 top notch pros who focused and
specialized in the topics we
selected.
Fatherville: How did
you come up with the name "The Story Watchers
Club"?
ES: The focus is on the
kids, because in the end, it's their experience that is
important. It's not about the storyteller, but rather
the one who's watching, what they're experiencing and
gleaning from it all. To that end, we filmed it so that
the kids watching the DVDs in their living room will
feel as though they are sitting right next to the kids
in the live TV studio audience. The viewers will feel
like they're a part of the club - the StoryWatchers
Club. We read once that "there are story-readers,
story-tellers, and story-listeners." We recognized that
there was one significant term missing from the list -
story-watchers. Since the art form is so visually
oriented, it seemed the perfect way to go.
Fatherville: What age groups
are best suited for the DVD
series?
ES: The core group is
5-10, as well as 11 and 12 year olds whose lives aren't
consumed by PlayStation or Xbox. In truth, we have seen
4 year olds and younger utterly mesmerized, and as for
parents and grandparents, they love it, too.
Storytelling truly has universal
appeal.
Fatherville: Besides the
pure entertainment of watching the DVD are you also
trying to teach kids specific lessons through the
stories? Talk a little more about that
please.
ES: Here's a short list
of what can be learned through
storytelling:
1. Sparks imagination.
When kids write or tell their own stories, they create
from within. The DVD series features Albert Einstein's
famous imagination-is-more-important-than-knowledge
quote on each back cover.
2. Promotes
interaction with parents to talk about stories from
their own childhood.
3. Moves a child to
write and tell their own stories (a concept reinforced
in the DVD Special Feature, "Kids Tell Stories,
Too").
4. Raises the desire to read. If
a child is interested in a folktale, he/she may be
inspired to read about folktales.
5.
Creates global awareness through different genres of
storytelling, holidays, multicultural events, and
traditions from other countries.
6.
Increases communication skills and
confidence
7. Opens discussion for
stories with moral issues or with a particular point of
view.
8. Inspires kids to think more
about the world around them.
9. Provides
a deeper understanding of people's diverse
heritages.
Fatherville:
In your opinion what are some of the biggest challenges
that young kids face today?
ES:
One of our storytellers, Brian "Fox" Ellis said it the
best: "It is true that the world moves a lot faster than
it did when we were kids. Children grow up in a
disjointed, high speed, transient world which ironically
means kids are actually less connected to their parents
and grandparents, their ancestors and that bigger sense
of who we are. At the same time it is amazing to watch
how kids slow down and listen to a story. The high tech
distractions disappear, they are transported through
folk tales to a place that is yet more real and
meaningful, and in this deeper listening are reconnected
to what makes us more human."
Fatherville: When you were a child
was there someone in your life who loved to tell you
stories?
ES: I'd always been
fascinated by my family history, how my grandparents
escaped from intense persecutions in Eastern Europe and
started new lives in America. My interest was oddly
inspired by their complete unwillingness to talk about
it, forcing me to hunt the stories down for myself
extracting information from my parents, aunts, and
uncles. I never understood how much kids really love
stories until my girls started hounding me for stories
on what it was like when I was their age growing up.
"Daddy, tell me a story about when you went to summer
camp," they would always ask. Charlotte's family came
from Ireland and settled in the south. Her grandmother
loved telling all the grandchildren
stories.
Fatherville: Are there
more DVD's planned?
ES: Most
definitely. We covered 5 topics our first series of
releases, but there are so many more we'd like to
tackle. In our next round of filming (when, we're not
sure at this point) we hope to do stories from the
African-American tradition, Hispanic culture, Jewish,
myths and fairytales, and maybe just a good ol' plain
comedy-for-kids DVD.
Fatherville: Thinking about all
of the stories you've included in the series which one
is your personal favorite?
Why?
ES: Not an easy question!
We'll go with Freedom Is My Home by Charlotte Battin,
and for a rather unlikely reason. On Day 1 of filming,
we, including our 8 year-old daughter Ariel, took in 8
stories from 4 extremely seasoned pros, each of whom had
very different styles, approaches, and rapport with the
kids. On the way home we asked Ariel the same question
you asked us: which story did you like the best? Two of
the tellers that day, Chris Fascione and Bob Myers, had
all of us, young and old, in stitches and we figured she
would name one of them. But her answer surprised us.
"The one about the railroad," she said. "It made me
cry." Say what? Charlotte Battin had masterfully told a
tale from the perspective of a 19th Century Quaker woman
remembering a time when she was 10 years old when she
and her family helped slaves to freedom on the
Underground Railroad. Of course we liked Charlotte's
story, but we had no inkling that an 8 year-old would
regard it as numero uno. Sure enough, after reviewing
the tapes and watching the children's expressions, their
rapt attentions, jaws hanging down to the floor, we
realized that this particular story was, in some
intangible way, special like no other. It taught us
that, truly, you never know what goes on inside the mind
of a child. ‘Story' taps in like no other medium we've
seen.
Fatherville: Thanks Eddie.
I really appreciate your time.
Discover more
about the StoryWatchers Club at http://www.storywatchersclub.com/
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