Best Selling Books by Naomi Baltuck

Includes more than forty selections, including action songs, chants, tongue twisters, musical games, and audience participation tales. Whether you are working with preschoolers or high schoolers, a story stretcher is a great way to create immediate rapport with your audience and within your group. These "two-minute miracles" from storyteller Naomi Baltuck will have children and adults, singing, moving, laughing, and begging for more. For each stretcher, she has included music, hand motions, tips for telling, or other personal touches developed during the countless times she has used it to hold the attention of her audiences. Time lengths and target audiences are also included so that you can select the best stretchers for every situation. Naomi has gathered these gems from her own childhood, from other storytellers, as well as from her children who bring home new activities from camp. Tried and true, these stretchers are a wonderful way to bring together family, friends, classes, Scout troops, and audiences everywhere.

A collection of international folktales about storytelling and the role of stories in transmitting information, history, and values.

The year is 1086, twenty years after the Norman Conquest, and the new Norman lords are squeezing their Saxon subjects mercilessly. To survive, the townspeople of Enmore Green band together under the wise leadership of Father Edmund and Sirona, the local seeress who is teaching the healing arts to her foster daughter, Aldyth. Beautiful, sensitive, and feisty, Aldyth has decided not to marry but instead to dedicate her life to serving the Goddess of the Crystal Spring. Her decision is complicated, though, by her companion in the resistance movement -- a sexy Robin Hood figure who has vowed to win her. She also attracts the attention of Gandulf -- the son of the hated Norman lord -- a gentle handsome man who, despite his upbringing, has an affinity for his Saxon subjects. Their tempestuous love triangle is played out against the turbulence of Saxon and Norman life and is dramatically resolved when a mysterious stranger reveals to Gandulf a secret from his past that will change everyone''s future.

Wake up and shake up with this professional storyteller''s easy-to-use sourcebook of chants, songs, action stories, riddles, jokes, tongue twisters, and participation games. These "two-minute miracles" are just some of the tricks that Naomi Baltuck uses to keep her young audiences creatively involved during storytelling sessions. Music is included, but you don''t need talent - just enthusiasm. Naomi provides all the practical storytelling tips on body movement, creative dramatics, and audience management needed to lead any size group through ridiculous hand and foot motions, silly faces, call and response, echo songs, and snappy choruses. Do you know "On Top of Spaghetti" or "The Princess Pat"? How about "Peanut Butter" or "Hi, My Name''s Joe"? There are over thirty such favorites here, many not available before. They were collected around the campfire, or borrowed from fellow storytellers, or created by Naomi herself. They are sure to delight kids from ages 5 to 14 - and they will be cherished by teachers, librarians, scout leaders, camp counselors, parents, entertainers, and anyone who enjoys having fun with children. Naomi''s audio cassette of Crazy Gibberish is available too. Groups can sing right along with it, or leaders can use it to dispel performance anxieties and shore up their routines.

Twenty years after the Norman conquest: Saxons are the underlings, Normans the ruling classes, and there is no love lost between the two. It''s a time of conflict in other areas: between the Christian church and the old pagan religion; between those who work to overthrow the Norman''s and those who settle for lives of serfdom.