If you’ve ever been to the Art Cafe in Maadi, you might have seen a door marked as the storytelling room. At any given moment you might find the room decorated with the festive holiday of the hour, such as Christmas, Halloween, or Valentine’s Day. You might stumble across tables of children happily creating arts and crafts together. You could even find the room transformed into the high sea, and the children turned into imaginary pirates sailing their just-the-right-size vessel across the imaginary waves. But most likely you will find them sitting in a circle, listening attentively to yet another animated tale read by the dedicated storyteller Yasmine Fadel.
The room is as child-friendly as possible, filled with colors, books, props, puppets, flashcards, and games. “All of these things help me bring the stories and characters to life,” shared Yasmine. And this atmosphere keeps the kids coming back for more. One thing you will rarely find in the storytelling room is an empty seat, Yasmine has a waiting list for when a child cancels so someone else can come join in on the fun.
Storytelling meets once a week at the Art Cafe. There are two age groups, the first from ages 3-5 and the second from ages 5-8. Yasmine has an assistant to help her with the increasingly popular sessions, especially with the art project that goes with the story. The younger children will get a chance to improve their fine motor skills, such as a collage or playing with play dough. The older kids get to design mosaics, learn origami, make small sculptures, or even build a pirate ship together as seen in the pictures.
While impressed with the activities dedicated to encourage reading, we had to ask Yasmine why she is so passionate about storytelling and why she carves out some of her time each week to lead the sessions. “When I meet people for the first time and they ask me what I work in and I tell them story telling, it’s a bit outside of the norm,” said Yasmine. An AUC graduate, Yasmine shared with us that she was a preschool teacher after graduation and started her own nursery in Mohandiseen. After she married and had her first baby, she had to quit the nursery but still wanted to do something, so she started storytelling. That was ten years ago. She was inspired by her mentor Lubna Hegazi, founder and director of Pre School Years. According to Yasmine, Lubna was always supportive of the idea of storytelling.
Yasmine explained, “It’s very rewarding and fulfilling when you get the positive feedback from the moms and see the changes in the kids, like I have those young ones who don’t know how to read. But that idea of them holding the books and flipping the pages and trying to make out stories, you see the development of the kids. So when they come in and they’re still young, and you see they’re struggling with language, and then by the end of the first year you see great changes in them. Then I have some kids who have been coming for years and they don’t want to leave. I have an eight-year old who’s been coming for three years and she doesn’t want to leave. I actually had to upgrade the books, find more advanced books and more meatier topics.”
Yasmine covers a range of topics in her books, both fiction and non-fiction. She covers classic tales such as the Three Little Pigs, and more information based topics such as ancient Egyptian history and the Titanic. She even reads books about day to day experiences the children might be going through, such as divorce or a new baby in the family. “There are other types of books I personally like, dealing with day to day topics that the kids come across, such as divorce, single parents, death. Those are the topics that I like, maybe having a new family member, or a new baby. So a pregnant mom could come to me and tell me she’s expecting a baby so we would start preparing her son or daughter for such an event,” said Yasmine.
Choosing the right books and planning how to read them is not an easy task, and Yasmine admitted that she is very picky when it comes to the books. She almost exclusively selects best-sellers, and then she looks to see if they will attract the audience. Are they colorful? Are they interactive? Are they out of the box? Do they have props that she can use to help animate the story? Yasmine is always trying to encourage the children to interact with the story and make it as hands-on as possible. All of this is because Yasmine believes that storytelling encourages reading, and reading is a habit. Yasmine encourages all of the parents to read to their children as much as possible at home.
Yasmine herself is planning on continuing to lead storytelling, and has even toyed with the idea of expanding. Art Cafe recently opened a new location in Sixth of October, and by next year she would like to have sessions there as well. “I’m happy because I’m getting a lot of good feedback. It’s very nice to compliment the story with the art, it’s a very good mixture,” stated Yasmine.
