The second quality that the story teller should have in mind in selecting stories for child dramatizing is _simplicity_ of dialogue. The story actors should converse, if not in childlike manner, at least in a simple, easy-to-understand vocabulary that will add to a child’s store of words but will not tax him too much in reproduction. Here, again, we must turn to folk tales and fables for simple, straightforward, rich dialogue. Quite naturally and without apparent effort children verbalize the dialogue of “The Little Red Hen” after hearing the story once or twice.
“Who will build my fire?” she said. “Not I!” said the Frog. “Not I!” said the Cat. “Then I will,” said the Little Red Hen.
These and the other bits of simple dialogue that go to make up the plot of this story; the conversation between the Wolf and the Pig in the story of “The Three Little Pigs,” the Lark and her little ones, Jack and the different characters in the Beanstalk story, the “Lion and the Mouse”--these are all examples of easily reproduced dialogue, stimulating spontaneous dialogue on the part of the children.
One further consideration in connection with the dramatic story--_spontaneity_.
Because of the popularity of so-called story dramatization among kindergartners and primary teachers, a school of child acting in kindergartens and the grades has sprung into life. Stories are dramatized _for_ children rather than _by_ the children themselves, and the results obtained through unnecessary costuming, certain stage properties and memorized dialogue are of no appreciable value in the mental development of the child. A child impersonates a pig gifted with human attributes, spontaneously, but he plays the part of a dressed-up fairy in a wooden, unspontaneous fashion. The difference between the two is just the difference between instinctive expression and prescribed action. In his “Principles of Psychology,” Professor Thorndyke says:
“Given any mental state, that movement will be made which the inborn constitution of the nervous system has connected with the mental state or part of it. The baby reaches for a bright object because, by inner organization, that sense presentation is connected with that act. For the same reason he puts an object into his mouth when he feels it within his grasp. The boy puts up his arm and wards off a blow because his brain is so organized as to connect those responses with those situations.