The Palace of Stories

Leo Sofer writes:

I’ve been telling stories to children for the last 22 years, over half my lifetime. I began by telling stories in primary schools in the South West of England, where I was a student at Exeter University, training to be a teacher. In seven years I visited 300 schools and gave over 2,000 performances to children aged four to fourteen. I consider this to have been my “apprenticeship”, in which I learned how to tell fairy tales, to become familiar with the landscapes that they traverse, and to become skilled at all the ways one can bring this world alive for children.

And then, once my apprenticeship was over, I began telling stories on the spur of the moment, on a range of themes far wider than the old fairy tales seemed to speak of, and yet still traversing that ancient yet familiar landscape. I’ve been telling these stories for fifteen years now, and am still learning new things from them. The images simply come to me as I tell them; dragons and knights, princesses and witches, wise old women and lonely kings…

When my son Luke was about four years old, I started telling him a new story every bedtime. The very best ones I re-recorded in the recording studio I have built in my garden. Now, two years on, my daughter Lara also gets stories at bedtime, and some of the stories I have told her are also here.

Some stories I accompany with an appalacian dulcimer, a musical instrument which would seem to have been created with fairy tales in mind. My wife Stella has also created music for some of the stories here, as well as the illustrations for this site.

There are also about 30 stories here that I recorded at the Moray Steiner School, near Findhorn in Scotland, where I used to live. I would visit a class at a time and ask them some questions about a theme that was pertinent to them. And then I would tell them the story that would come to me as I sat before them, a fairy tale for all of us.

And then there are a few here from the archives, European fairy tales tales that I laboriously set to music in the early years of my storytelling journey. I love this world of stories, and know that it has so much to offer our children: heart, mind and soul. This site is for children everywhere: to enchant, to delight and to entertain.

Gloucestershire, England.

PS: I also have a storytelling site for adults, featuring over 60 stories to download. The site features a free monthly podcast, a blog and more on my storytelling journey.
www.StoriesOfTheJourneyHome.com