The Stories Behind The Stories, more than just history for book wonks

Back in the day, there was something on MTV or VH1 known as “a can’t miss show on cable”. Behind The Music took a look at the history of musical groups or artists and managed to do it with such an addictive flair that the Surgeon General should’ve issued warnings before the program. The Stories Behind The Stories is a book that looks at the things that inspired authors who’ve written some of the classic children’s books that people know today.

The Stories Behind The Stories examines 29 books or stories that any elementary-aged student will know. Most of them have read at least one of the stories and many of the students have read most of the stories. This is especially true if you’re talking about fifth graders. If that’s the case then those audience members have heard of all of the books and probably read most of them.

I was talking with a fifth-grade class the other day and a group of them were reading The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. Even though only some of them were actively reading it, every student in the class had heard of the book. During their reading block, I stopped their work to read them a couple of paragraphs from The Truth Behind The Stories about the book.

Sensing that I was on borrowed time with the class I started to cherry-pick some sentences from the book. “Author C.S. Lewis was wounded in WW I….loved The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a kid….studied mythology……and became friends with J.R.R. Tolkien….”, I said in a disposing manner. In a way, I was tricking the readers because I knew that those last two nuggets would make them perk up.

“Tolkein, didn’t he write….”, asked one of the kids. As the student tried to recall the book, I filled in their gap and immediately started reading the paragraph in my book about how Lewis’ studies led him to The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. It’s amazing to realize that Lewis had the idea for the book, ruminated on it for 20 years, and then published it. Granted there was lots of research, rough drafts, conversations with Tolkien, and more that went into creating the books.

It was here when one of the other students took that bait. “So, an idea that we have today, could become something big in 20 or more years?”, they said with just an incredulous hint. We then talked about some of the characters from the book, their strengths, who the author might have modeled them after, and what situations in his real-life would’ve inspired certain events. A willing conversation happening between a group of 11-year-olds is an amazing thing.

Imagine that conversation happening 28 more times with different books and you’ve got an idea of how The Stories Behind The Stories could take place in your home. Initially, we thought that this is a beautiful, well-constructed book that would be at home exclusively in a library. It was then, ironically, that we took the book to school and discovered that it can lead to conversations about books that lead young readers to question, imagine and learn about things they already know about.

For example, every kid in elementary school knows Mother Goose, The Night Before Christmas, Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, and more. They know these characters, but they probably do not know the stories behind them. Even those lower to mid-elementary school readers would be able to understand the pages in this book if it were read to them. Those mid-elementary readers through lower middle school students will be able to read, understand and enjoy the content in The Stories Behind The Stories. It’s loaded with big, full-page illustrations that are consistent with each profiled book. It’s clip art that’s reminiscent, but not identical, to the profiled literature. This allows each classic book that’s being highlighted the chance for it to live on its own. The result is a short story about a classic book that feels complete, in addition to making readers curious about the story that it’s telling you about.

The Stories Behind The Stories is by Danielle Higley with illustrations by Stephanie Miles and available on Bushel & Peck Books.

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