Notes for a general preface

It’s been suggested that telling stories is what made us human. We devote a huge proportion of our lives to enjoying fictions.  Novels, films, soaps, and before that travelling storytellers.  Perhaps this has been so since the dawn of our species, and is what made our remote ancestors special. Perhaps creating fictions conferred the ability to explore scenarios verbally, so that trial and error took place, so far as possible, around the campfire, not out on the perilous savannah. 

That's a draft of the first paragraph.  I'm working on the rest, and it looks as if it will come under the following headings

• About myths
• On the oral tradition that preceded the written accounts we have
• In retelling an old tale, how far can you stray from the original?
• What do we say about unwelcome messages that may be contained in some of these stories?
• Maybe some suggestions for how the stories, and the prefaces, can be used.

About these stories

It all started with Martha, who was 4 at the time but is 6 now. Sometimes I tell her well-known stories, in the car usually, and I've noticed that they improve on each telling, often due to her input. next I wrote them down. And the next thought was let's publish a book under the title “ten stories your child should know”. This title isn’t meant to imply that I have surveyed all the world’s stories and come up with a top ten. They just happen to my top ten, selected from amongst the stories I happen to know.

There will be a preface addressed to the adults, suggesting common themes between stories, or other points of interest.

My next big hurdle is to work out what age range I am writing for.

Stories I have in mind, some already written, some just a twinkle in my eye, are Adam and Eve, Prometheus, Oedipus, the Thousand and One Nights, Midas the King Has Asses Ears, King Lear, the Tower of Babel. I need at least one Irish story, and one Scandinavian.

What about China, Africa, America … ? I need to do some research do I not. Suggestions welcome. Would I find the right voice though? If not it wouldn't work.

The book, by the way, will never happen, but it’s fun to pretend.