What’s in your story soup?
J. R. R. Tolkien, in a famous essay on fairy-stories, wrote about “the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story” that has been boiling and stewing for centuries, with new bits continually added to it—bits like Cinderella, King Arthur, dragons, or the idea of love at first sight. These stories and characters and themes have simmered so long in our collective imaginations that they are a kind of inheritance, and into this great Cauldron we storytellers (the Cooks) dip our ladles and draw out the ingredients of new stories—which may themselves find their way back into the Pot to swirl and stew and to inspire future Cooks.
Tolkien’s picture was in my mind as I wrote about my main character, Henry Penwhistle, playing in his bedroom at the beginning of Henry and the Chalk Dragon: “Waving his sword in sweeping circles, he whirled past the overflowing book chest with its stirred-up soup of favorite stories—stories about wild things and unlikely heroes, chocolate factories and tiny motorcycles, buried giants and mock turtles.” Henry’s imagination has been fed by stories from that Cauldron, and throughout his adventures it is clear that the stories he’s read have shaped his ideas about himself, about others, and about the art he makes. He’s a Cook dipping his spoon into the Soup and drawing out a story of his very own.
I’m not only a writer; I also teach creative writing to children, and both roles require me to be intimately acquainted with the marvelous, inherited soupiness of storytelling. When kids ask me how to become a writer, I say, “First, the best thing you can possibly do is to read. Read, read, read, read, read.” Finding those kids who’ve been raised on a hearty diet of books, who have drunk deeply of the Soup, is terribly exciting to me—because in them I see imaginations capable of creating poems and stories and art that have the power to shape other people’s view of themselves and the world—that could, in fact, become part of the ongoing inheritance that charms and challenges and enriches all of us.
Librarians, teachers, and parents who nurture a child’s love for reading aren’t just helping that one child succeed. They are, potentially, sending out into the world an imaginative Cook who can add his or her own stories to the great Cauldron that has been bubbling for centuries. They are stirring the Soup that will inspire future generations. And that is a high calling indeed.
Originally published on the Geolibrarian blog.