Cumulative tales build the way a snowball does: they get bigger as each new point in the tale passes to add another layer to the whole. Items (and sometimes people) are collected as the story moves along. “Stone Soup” is such a tale and has various versions in many cultures. Cumulative stories are sometimes rhythmic, or contain a repeated refrain, inviting children to join in readily. They give opportunities for prediction, to increase upon the rounds within the story as told with new suggestions, and as storytelling and writing prompts for an audience to create new cumulative tales. For all these reasons, they make excellent bridges between oracy and literacy.
Let’s start with a cumulative tale that involves…soup! MAMA’S SPECIAL WONTON SOUP by Wai Mei Wong, illustrated by Xin Yue Zhu, and published by Lantana, takes us along on a little girl’s trip to the market to purchase pork for her mother’s soup-making. Her route is filled with neighbors and relatives who add vegetables, fruit, and even a familial hug to her trip. And what better way to celebrate community generosity than by having everyone round to enjoy the soup when it’s prepared! Ingredients collected and illustrations firmly place the tale in Southern China. What kind of soup would your young readers want to make and can they suggest where its ingredients might be acquired?
CAN I SIT IN THE MIDDLE? written and illustrated by Susanne Strasser, translated from the German by Melody Shaw, and published by Gecko Press, features a couch that must grow to accommodate an avalanche of creatures, each of whom wants to sit nearest the child who had set out to read a book with their hamster. There are zoo animals and jungle animals and the couch grows increasingly crowded–until the arrival of the rhinoceros literally upends the whole load and our cast must find a new, and more expandable, location in which to share the book. Published as a board book, there is plenty to talk about here, and to ask, a lapsitting toddler (or a preschool group, too). Who will arrive next? Will the latest would-be audience member be able to squeeze into a middle position?
This is a second opportunity to meet Mr. Norton and the menagerie who likes to keep him company. Following up on MR. NORTON’S NEW HAT comes MR. NORTON’S NEW TRUCK. Author Huw Lewis Jones and illustrator Corey Egbert are teamed up again by Tiger Tales Books to share why and how the eponymous gentleman handles what could be a sorry state of affairs when his trusty bicycle is damaged by a local bear. Mr. Norton tries numerous ways of getting to work without the bike, with each means complicated by critters who want to keep him company by attaching themselves to his sleeves, trouser legs, and other perches. Finally, Mr. Norton finds a solution that will both get him where he needs to go while allowing the critters to come along without hampering his transit.
With THE RUNAWAY PANCAKE by Tiny Fisscher, illustrated by Sophie Pluim, translated from the Dutch by Polly Lawson, and published by Floris Books, we return to a retold classic (and another gustatory opportunity). Dad’s made a pancake but that pancake doesn’t want the hungry family to eat it so out of the pan it goes at a run. What’s accumulated in this story, rather than ingredients, is an ever growing gaggle of hungry pursuers: the large extended human family, then farmyard animals, and finally into the forest where hungry creatures eagerly join in the chase. There’s a twist in the end (spoiler: the pancake does not elude every hungry mouth) and the contemporary setting in Pluim’s illustrations make it easy for young viewers to see who’s who and guess at who might next join the chase. Rhythmic language means pre-readers also can learn the pancake’s catch phrase to shout it at appropriate points in the tale.
Bonus! Thanks to Floris Books, you can carry on THE RUNAWAY PANCAKE‘s travels into your kitchen and help young ones create their own delicious potential escapee!
