Georgene Faulkner

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Miss Georgene Faulkner
The Chicago Story Lady


Exclusive Management for Chautauquas 
THE MUTUAL LYCEUM BUREAU
 Suite 55 Auditorium Building, Chicago



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The Chicago Story Lady


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HERE has never been a more valuable attraction offered Chautauqua Assemblies than Miss Georgene Faulkner, better known as the 
Chicago Story Lady.
 Every one in Chicago knows of her great success in the summer schools of that city—how the children of the slums crowded about her and forgot the dingy tenements, the dark alleys and the foul streets, as they lived again in castles grand, among princes and fairies of storyland.




FOR CHAUTAUQUAS MISS FAULKNER OFFERS THE FOLLOWING FEATURES:



CHILDRENS' STORY HOUR




In which she tells stories of thrilling interest to little folks.




STORIES IN THE HOME




How to tell a story and what stories to tell with suggestion as to where they may be secured.




STORY TELLING FOR SCHOOLS




Of great interest to all teachers of primary and intermediate grades.




BIBLE STORIES




For Sunday School Teachers.  Also a Sunday afternoon with the children.




CHILDRENS' PLAY GROUNDS




Miss Faulkner is able to present games and museuments for the little folks and has had an extended experience in conducting childrens' parties.




Picture copyrighted by the Bobbs-Merrill Co., Publishers of James Whitcomb Riley's Poems.




The Chicago Story Lady


We could easily fill this entire circular with enthusiastic descriptions of Miss Faulkner's work from the most prominent papers of this country.  We believe a keener appreciation of her work will result from reading Miss Faulkner's own version of her work as given to the reporters of a number of the Chicago papers, together with their comment on the interview.



FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE



She lives in a house of the older fashion, where the carefully kept yard is filled with growing things, sweet peas and the like, and the corners of the rooms are piled high with books of fairy tales and myths of practically every nation and age.  It is a veritable warehouse of folk lore and the 'Story Lady' holds the wand that has caused many a little tenement dweller in Chicago and New York to enter fairyland for the first time.


'I love to tell stories,' said Miss Faulkner with modesty. 'I never moralize and sometimes I tell the creepy kind of stories which some people disapprove of, but I believe they are good for the children.



I don't believe in telling stories that I, myself, do not like.  Unless one possesses the spirit of the stories they cannot be told with any degree of success.  Stories must be heart to heart talks.




The 'Just So' stories of Kipling are favorites.  So is 'The Ship That Found Herself,' 'Wee Willie Winkle,' and 'The Elephant's Child.'




'The Gingerbread Boy' is a favorite with the colored children.  Little darkies are the most difficult children to get into school.  For some reason they stay awake and play all night and then sleep in the daytime.  One day a group of them came cake walking into the school.  They were as restless as could be and one of the public school teachers exclaimed:  'I never saw a harder group.'  But when they heard the story of the 'Gingerbread Boy' they burst out laughing, their teeth glistened, and their eyes stood wide open.'




Miss Faulkner says she finds the Russian Jews less interested in fairy tales than the children of other nationalities.  They are more serious.  The Italian children follow her about until she feels like comparing herself to the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and the Bohemian children take the same interest in the 'Story Lady.'  Miss Faulkner possesses much the same kind of charm that has enabled Maud Adams to make the hardheaded men and serious minded women rise breathlessly from their seats when as Peter Pan she comes to the front of the stage and pleads:  'Say, O, please say, you believe in fairies!




FROM A WELL-KNOWN STORY WRITER




It is now widely acknowledged that education has taken a distinct step forward in the definite recognition of the fact that the training of the heart and the imagination is of as much importance as the training of the hand or the intellect, and that this training of the emotional nature can best be carried forward by means of stories selected from the world's great myths and legends as recorded in the best literature.  Miss Georgene Faulkner has so thoroughly prepared herself along these lines and has manifested so much native ability in story telling before the classes of the Chicago Kindergarten College that I do not hesitate to recommend her for any educational or social occasion where stories are desired.




ELIZABETH HARRISON
, Principal Chicago Kindergarten College.




FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE CHICAGO WOMANS' CLUBS




One of the happiest scenes witnessed at the Vacation Schools last summer was the gathering of six hundred children in the hall of the Froebel School to listen to a group of stories told by Miss Georgene Faulkner.  Miss Faulkner has learned the secret of holding the attention of the children and is well fitted to bring into our schools that much needed factor in education, story-telling.  We hope, in future, to make this a more prominent feature of Vacation School work.




GERTRUDE B. BLACKWELDER
, Chairman Vacation School Board,



The Chicago Story Lady

CHICAGO TRIBUNE


Miss Georgene Faulkner is the 'Story Lady' of the Chicago vacation schools.  Through the efforts of Gertrude B. Blackwelder, chairman of the vacation school board, the board of education has selected Miss Faulkner to turn the minds of children from the street and divert them into realms where the flat buildings are built of pink icing and ginger bread, and where the fairy prince kills the dragon and bears the fairy princess away' most every day.




THE SUNDAY MAGAZINE



In the vacation schools the doctrine of the fairy story is preached every day in the week.  An official story teller to the school children has been appointed.



And this little woman who has been appointed the official story teller to the vacation school children is Miss Georgene Faulkner, a little figure with a face that is all animation; a young woman who is in sympathy with children.  She goes from one school to another every day in summer to tell her stories to the little children of the congested districts—little children who never have heard such stories before.  They come because the stories delight them; they stay and learn.





THE CHICAGO AMERICAN



Georgene Faulkner, 98 Oakwoods boulevard, petite, smiling and the most fascinating reconteur in Chicago, is the only paid corporation story teller in the world. 


Miss Faulkner has been engaged by the Board of Education to tell fairy stories to the children in the vacation schools, and in the last three weeks she has enthralled 6.726 children, to whom her strangely fascinating tales of the jungle and the hills have been related under the observant eye of Gertrude B. Blackwelder, who is chairman of the vacation school board, and Mrs. Charles Edward Cheney, wife of Bishop Cheney of the Episcopal Church.




Miss Faulkner has been engaged to tell stories to the children in the schools because she is a story telling genius.  She paraphrases Kipling's 'Just So' stories and with them so enthralls her auditors of whatever color or creed that they lose themselves in the story she is telling and no matter what their station in life become while under her control just plain children with imaginations that absorb Miss Faulkner's fairy lore as a sponge absorbs water.




THE DUBUQUE TIMES



The children of Dubuque's seven kindergartens were charmed and delighted Saturday afternoon with stories told by Miss Georgene Faulkner of Chicago, a noted kindergarten worker and story teller.  Miss Faulkner is a young woman possessed of a remarkable amount of brightness and vivacity and her natural ability for her work is enriched by a varied experience in the kindergartens of the east, the summer playgrounds and the Chicago public and vacation schools.


'Last summer', said Miss Faulkner, 'the story-telling in the vacation schools was wholly experimental.  Through the efforts of the Chicago Woman's Club, the superintendent consented to introduce the story telling into the eleven schools, situated in various districts, the Ghetto, the stockyards district, and other dark sections where the only ones bringing light are the teachers and the 'swells', as the children call the rich club women who come to them from time to time laden with flowers and gifts.'



'During the six weeks I was thus occupied, I told stories to 14,764 children of all ages and nationalities.  The work was so thoroughly successful that it is to be continued this season.'




'To watch the different effects of the same story upon children of various nationalities forms one of the pleasing studies of my work.  Italian and negro children like a story with emotion and a humorous story appeals to them and causes them to laugh heartily.  Bohemian children are slow to perceive humor, but fully appreciate it when they comprehend the funny side of the story.  Russian Jewish children are eager for fierce tales of bloodshed.'




'The boys, when they have their choice, ask for a story with a hero.  They like the portion where the prince slays the dragon or by some other heroic deed releases himself from a tight situation.  To the girls, the pleasing feature is the scene where the hero rescues the princess, kisses her and they live happily ever after.  It's the natural home instinct in the girls that makes this appeal to them.'




'The boys in the detention houses surprise me.  When I tell them stories, while they are awaiting the action of the juvenile court, I find they like stories full of the spirit of adventure, tales of piracy or what you will, but they always want the law strictly upheld in the climax of the story.'




'I believe the story telling in the dark districts leads to many good results.  It gives the children a glimpse into another life, stimulates interest in the best books and in art gives them simple amusement and keeps them away from the cheap play-houses.  When I come from the auditoriums, followed by a band of children asking questions of the 'Story-Lady' as they call me, I feel quite as I imagine the Pied Piper of Hamlin did.'




'To be a successful story teller the teacher must be enthusiastic.  She must makethe story a part of herself and tell it in a personal way as to one child.  She must love the story and believe in it in order to satisfy the children and make them love it.  The story form and the story spirit are the essential features:  memorization is not necessary, nor does it bring success as does telling the story in a heart to heart way.




THE INTER OCEAN


Miss Georgene Faulkner, known to thousands of Chicago school children as 'The Story Lady,' has entered upon her second year of her vacation work by visiting the schools and amusing the pupils with fairy tales and narratives of patriotism.  She is a native Chicagoan, is a graduate of the public schools, of Kenwood Institute, and of the Chicago Kindergarten College.  She has been director of the kindergarten class in Kenwood Institute, and beginning in 1902 spent three seasons in Brooklyn as director of playgrounds.