Storytelling: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, Linda Williams & Megan Lloyd

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything
Linda Williams, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
ISBN: 9780690045840
First told Fall 1996, purchased for storytelling resource Sept 2014.

This is an excellent example of a storytelling-friendly picture book.  It's prime content for Halloween, which is one of our few remaining "tale-telling" holidays.  It's got a repetitive and building climax inside a simple framework story, allowing easy expansion or contraction depending on the audience.  It's got a somewhat scary feel to it, with a sweet homey twist payoff at the end.  It's not too juvenile or pandering to distance adults, and it's not too scary or "adult" to confuse children.

I still remember most of it, and if I had to give a storytelling performance on pain of death, this is the one I'd pull out.

With Halloween approaching, and me getting back into storytelling, I wanted to re-visit my first foray into performance arts.


Summary:
A little old lady lives alone, and needs to fetch edibles from the forest.  She's heading home along the path when she encounters various articles of clothing, from shoes to pants to shirt to gloves (each with a distinctive sound or movement "Clomp Clomp" for the shoes, "wiggle wiggle" for the gloves) culminating in a giant pumpkin head that says BOO!  She startles and runs back to the house, and once safely at home, her natural bravery reasserts itself, and she stands up to the now-assembled creature and puts it straight, assigning it a job in the garden as a scarecrow since it likes scaring people so much.