de Investigadores em leitura - Universidade do Minho

These individual trajectories can be grouped into a limited set of paths into
storytelling. Potentially, these paths indicate patterns of how one becomes a storyteller for
children in Madrid or Spain. Among the participating narrators there seem to be four
converging routes:
(1) Storytelling through work in non-formal education and/or literacy promotion programs:
One group of narrators -Mónica Garrido and Pepe Pérez- became storytellers for children
through an involvement in informal/non-formal educational programs for children and youth.
Their initial training concentrated in alternative educational programs, either as an outgrowth
of formal teacher training or as the principal form of qualification. They are currently able to
work as full-time storytellers and ‘literacy promoters’ (animadores de la lectura).
(2) Storytelling through drama and the performing arts: A second group of participants
entered storytelling for children through advanced training within drama studies (Mercedes
Carrión, Alicia Merino, Clara and Renuka). For all these participants, narrating for children is
one part of a varied set of storytelling activities across contexts and age groups and may be
more or less prominent in their current activities depending on emerging professional
opportunities.
(3) Storytelling as involvement in children’s literature: A third group of participants engage in
narrating as part of their professional involvement in the world of children’s literature, either
as author, illustrator and/or bookseller. Violeta Monreal and Esther fit clearly into this
category. They have established careers as authors/illustrators of children’s literature and
concentrate their work in contexts that are part of the ‘world of publishing’ (bookstores,
promotional events, collaborations with commercial publishers, book fairs, etc.).
(4) Storytelling as a puppeteer: A final group is composed by the puppeteers that have
participated in this study. The three puppeteers I have interviewed, Sheila, Daniel and José,
have very different professional life histories from the rest of the narrators in the study but
show some remarkable similarities as a subgroup 3 . They only work with puppets for children
and entered this profession mostly through an artisan-like self-taught process.
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