Reaching Across Time and Space: Tales from Ukrainian children – Book 1

These stories were written with children in storytelling circles, where each child takes a turn to create a few lines of story. The story starts and is co-created with every step the characters take. These three stories were grouped together as expressions of friendship, kindness, empathy and supporting each other when times get hard. Each story touches upon the ways in which we can be the friends we want to make in the world – using our voices to sing songs of joy, whisper words of comfort, and even join someone on a journey they might find hard to make alone.

These stories lend themselves to magical, sensory storytelling sessions, with elf eyes bright in the darkness, and deep Bear voices as characters stomp through the forest. The children’s use of animal metaphor shows a deep connection to their environment, and a Ukrainian storytelling tradition of animal fable, or folklore, as a form to explore address solidarity between people. It also reflects the immediate environment many of the children enjoy in their carehomes, which at the time of writing were in very rural, forested locations – with animals, trees and the delights of nature just outside the window