Stories on Stage: Children's Plays for Readers Theater, With 15 Reader's Theatre Play Scripts From 15 Authors, Including Roald Dahl's The Twits and Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School

by Aaron Shepard

  "Stories on Stage" is a collection of reader's theater scripts for young readers, adapted from stories by fifteen different authors, including Louis Sachar, Nancy Farmer, and Roald Dahl. Coming from such genres as humor, fantasy, and multicultural folktales, stories were selected for their dramatic quality, literary value, and appeal to young people. The scripts may be freely copied for noncommercial purposes. With a focus on ages 8 to 15, the collection features a wide range of reading levels. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// Aaron Shepard is the award-winning author of numerous children's books and magazine stories, as well as three books on reader's theater, "Stories on Stage," "Folktales on Stage," and "Readers on Stage." He spent five years as a professional actor in reader's theater, performing in schools and conducting workshops for teachers, librarians, and students. He now hosts Aaron Shepard's RT Page, the Web's most popular reader's theater destination, with visits by thousands of teachers and librarians each week. 

Genres: Theatre, Drama

162 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1993

About the author

Aaron Shepard is the author of many books, stories, and scripts for young people, as well as professional books and resources for writers and educators. He has also worked professionally in both storytelling and reader's theater, as a performer, director, and teacher trainer. Aaron's lively and meticulous retellings of folktales and other traditional literature have found homes with more than a dozen children's book publishers, large and small, and with the world's top children's literary magazines, winning him honors from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, the Bank Street College of Education, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the American Folklore Society. His extensive Web site, visited by thousands of teachers and librarians each week, is known internationally as a prime resource for folktales, storytelling, and reader's theater, while his stories and scripts have been featured in textbooks from publishers worldwide, including Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, SRA, The College Board, Pearson Education, National Geographic, Oxford University Press, Barron's, Hodder Education, and McGraw-Hill.

Reviews

[Keesha 11-12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories on Stage is an amazing book. This book contains many scripts that will make you laugh. After reading this book, I wondered how hard it was for all of these authors to write these amazing stories. Reader's Theater is one of my favorite things to do. One of the things I like about Reader's Theater is that you get to play a completely different character. I absolutely love this book.

[Evelyn]

i loved it

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5

Reader's Theatre is a bit of a lost art. From the late 1970's through the mid-1980's I participated in a number of reader's Theatre programs - usually through church groups but also in my university theatre program. It's quite likely that some of those scripts I performed in were written by Aaron Shepard.

This current collection of short reader's theatre scripts is a revised reprint of a collection printed in 1993 and revised in 2005. They've been revised again for fit the e-device reader.

The scripts are geared for a young audience - late elementary school/early middle school, most likely and it is easy to see how these short plays, intended to be read aloud and not necessarily performed, might fit nicely into a school English or speech class.

Only one moment in a script struck me as not particularly 'pc.' In the final script, Westwoods, a Narrator (there are almost always more than one narrator per script) says: "The Princess was beautiful, thought John, only very, very fat. Her father was still fatter." And just a few lines later King John recites a poem:

You're fatter than butter, you'd melt by the fire.
You're very much fatter than I could desire.
When I see you, my courage commences to ooze.
I've come to propose, but I hope you'll refuse.

Funny, but every overweight child in the class will cringe and there will be snickering all around. I don't see this particular script getting much attention in today's educational system that is extremely sensitive to issues such as this.

The scripts included in this book are:

Millions of Cats - Wanda Gag
Harriet - Florence Parry Heide
The Legend of Lighting Larry - Aaron Shepard
Mr. Bim's Bamboo - Carol Farly
Three Sideways Stores From Wayside School - Louis Sachar
The Jade Stone - Caryn Yacowitz
Talk - Harold Coudrlander
The Bean Boy - Monice Shannon
How Tom Beat Captain Najork - Russell Hoban
Tapiwa's Uncle - Nancy Farmer
The Kid From the Commercial - Stephen Manes
The Fools of Chelm - Steve Sanfield
Mr. Twit's Revenge - Roald Dahl
Mouse Woman and the Snails - Christie Harris
Westwoods - Eleanor Farjeon

All the scripts were adapted for reader's theatre by Aaron Shepard and they do tend to sound the same when you read them straight through, as I did. My favorites were Millions of Cats, Three Sideways Stories from Wayside School, The Jade Stone, and The Bean Boy.

Looking for a good book? Reader's Theatre is a great opportunity to involve a number of 'performers' without having to spend any rehearsal time and Aaron Shepard's Stories on Stage is a collection of fifteen Reader's Theatre scripts for young readers and is a wonderful introduction to the format.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.