Bookshow at Home with Daniel Morden

This week we will be focusing on one of our authors beginning with the letter D - Daniel Morden! Daniel has given many spellbinding performances to rapt audiences of children and their teachers for The Children’s Bookshow and we are delighted that he will be joining us for World Book Day as part of our Digital Festival.

Book of the Week: Secret Tales from Wales

A collection of eight unfamiliar, secret or forgotten folktales which Daniel Morden has come across during his travels as a storyteller and retold in his own very distinctive style. A bringing together of magicians and masons, blacksmiths, beggars and royalty, in an exploration of luck, cleverness and secrets.

Author in focus

Daniel Morden has travelled all over the world as a professional storyteller, bringing to life the stories and tales that have helped us make sense of our world through the ages. He loves tales of enchantment, mystery and danger, where ordinary people triumph through their own bravery and native wit. Daniel really enjoys retelling traditional Welsh folktales and his collection Dark Tales from the Woods won the Tir na n-Og Prize in 2007, as did his next collection of stories, Tree of Leaf and Flame.

Watch Daniel's performance of Molly Whuppy!

Activities!

Perform a Puppet Show of the Story

Make a shoe box theatre and perform a puppet show of Daniel’s story. Make stick puppets of the main characters and use a shoe box or cereal box with one side cut away for the stage. Cut a slit in the top of the box to allow you to control your puppets.

Create a Silhouette Picture

Make a silhouette picture of the giants' house in the forest.

You will need:

• Pencil (soft ‘B’ pencils work best)
• Sheet of A4 paper
• Baking Parchment (or tracing paper if you have it)
• Sticky tape
• Scissors.

Step 1
Start by drawing the house in the middle of a piece of paper. Then add a wavy line behind the house for the horizon.

Next, add the trees, making them bigger and thicker in the foreground, and smaller and thinner in the background to give your picture some perspective.

Add texture, detail and shading to your picture.

Step 2
Cut a sheet of baking paper to the same size as your picture and draw several large tree trunks with some grass in the foreground.

Step 3
Turn your first drawing face down and upside down onto a flat surface. Line up the second drawing, face up, next to it. Stick the two sheets together with sticky tape.

Step 4
Finally, fold the two together to see the final effect of your silhouette picture.

Storytelling

Use these top tips from Daniel to help you tell your own story. Choose a short story which you already know very well or one which you can learn quickly and easily. Fairy tales and fables work very well, especially those which have repetitive elements to them.

We’d love to see your puppet shows and silhouette pictures, and would love to see videos of you telling a story. To send us your work to display in our gallery use the link below, or upload to twitter with the hashtag #BookshowAtHome.

Email us your work for our gallery