Story telling

"If you want your children to be intelligent," Albert Einstein said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales." Stories are how we make sense of the world, they help shape what we see, do and dream. Children who have difficulties focusing in class will sit spellbound by a narrative.

There are a lot of studies on the power of stories; psychologists refer to information presented in story form as 'psychologically privileged'. Our brains, it seems, are especially attentive and responsive to information conveyed in a narrative. Stories greatly aid recall. They provide a meaningful structure — hooks upon which to hang new knowledge.

All this is a gift, you would have hoped, to communicators of science. Yet too many authors of children's science books pick up on one of the key strands of storytelling without taking the creative step of bringing them all together.

The use of complications and challenges in a narrative help to create a problem solving scenario that involves the reader.


David Donohue, Nature/nature, no 7172, 13 Dec 2007