Why Stories Matter for Children’s Imagination
On enchanted gardens, curly butterfly wings, and the joy of making up stories together.
On our way to kindergarten, an ordinary tree can suddenly become home to a secret, enchanted garden. A ray of sunlight filtering through the branches might be the beginning of an adventure, and a tiny mushroom on the forest floor could turn out to be someone’s home.
That’s often how things unfold when I’m with my daughter, Sienna.
We make up stories together all the time. Sometimes they begin with something we notice along the way. Other times, with a question or a character one of us has invented. And I’m constantly amazed by how effortlessly she can turn something perfectly ordinary into a story.
It has made me wonder what really happens when children tell stories, and why imagination plays such an important part in their world.
When Imagination Takes Flight
One of Sienna’s own characters is called Gina the Butterfly. Gina has curly wings and a rainbow belly button. And although her wings are different, she can, of course, fly. She’s magical, after all.
But Sienna recently told me that Gina actually gets hurt quite often because her curly wings make flying a little tricky.
There’s something I find rather lovely about that story. Gina can do something extraordinary, even if it doesn’t always come easily. Her curly wings don’t magically straighten out, and being magical doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes effortless. She simply keeps flying. She has her own strengths and her own kind of magic.
I don’t know whether Sienna sees the same meaning in the story that I do. Perhaps she just thinks it’s funny to imagine a butterfly who flies a little crookedly and occasionally tumbles to the ground.
But that’s part of what fascinates me about the stories children create. They don’t have to follow the same rules or arrive at the same conclusions we adults might expect.
A butterfly can have curly wings. She can be magical and clumsy at the very same time.
Storytelling Is Part of How Children Play
When children invent stories, they’re doing more than simply entertaining themselves. Storytelling can be part of how they play, explore and make sense of the world around them.
In their research article Fortællekraft og legekraft (The Power of Storytelling and Play), Helle Hovgaard Jørgensen and Mona Pagaard Nielsen explore the relationship between play and storytelling. Among other things, they describe how children actively shape and transform stories through their actions and interactions with materials and their surroundings. It’s something I recognise from my own experiences.
When Sienna and I make up stories, we rarely know where they’re going to lead. I might begin by imagining a fairy living inside a tree, but Sienna decides that the fairy is actually a princess who has lost her magic. And suddenly, that becomes the story we’re telling. The adult doesn’t always have to come up with the idea, know the plot or decide how the story ends. Sometimes, perhaps the most important thing we can do is simply listen and follow along.
Imagination Grows from the Real World, Too
I’ve often thought of children’s imagination as something almost limitless. But one of the fascinating things about imagination is how closely it’s connected to the world children already know.
Psychologist Paul L. Harris of Harvard University has spent many years studying children’s imagination. In his book Children’s Imagination, he explores how children draw on their experiences of the real world when imagining possibilities, creating pretend scenarios and thinking about how things might be different. I find that such an interesting idea.
Perhaps that’s exactly why a tree can become so much more than a tree. A child knows what a tree is. They’ve seen its branches and leaves, perhaps watched a bird building a nest. But what if someone lives inside its trunk? What if the tree has a secret door that only opens when the moon is high in the sky?
Reality and imagination don’t have to be opposites. They can exist side by side, bringing each other to life.
When We Grown-Ups Get to Join In
One of the loveliest things about making up stories with Sienna is that I’ve started using my own imagination again.
As a child, I was always drawing and writing. I dreamed of becoming a novelist and could lose myself completely in books and imaginary worlds. I still remember what it felt like to read The Brothers Lionheart and disappear into Astrid Lindgren’s extraordinary world.
But somewhere between education, work, deadlines and all the practicalities of adult life, imagination gradually began to take up less space. With Sienna, I’ve started finding my way back to it.
She constantly reminds me that the distance between the ordinary and the extraordinary doesn’t have to be very great. That we can invent something simply because it’s fun. And that a story doesn’t need to be fully thought through before we begin telling it.
Perhaps that’s one of the gifts children give us adults: the chance to see the world a little differently again.
A Story Doesn’t Have to Begin with a Book
I love children’s books, and reading aloud is a wonderful way to spend time together. But stories don’t always have to begin with a book. They can begin with a stone, a picture, a tree or a little character on the wall.
I believe one of the most valuable things we can do as adults is make room for children’s own ideas. Not necessarily by organising elaborate creative activities, but by being curious and asking small questions.
Who do you think lives inside that tree?
Where do you think the little badger is going?
What do you think happens when all the fairies meet in their secret treehouse?
Sometimes a whole adventure grows out of a single question. Other times, we get a quick answer that’s forgotten moments later. Both are perfectly fine.
For me, it isn’t about teaching children to tell stories the “right” way. It’s about giving their own stories room to grow.
When a Drawing Becomes the Beginning of a Story
When I started creating Little Northlings, I wanted to bring something of the Nordic natural world, mythology and storytelling traditions into children’s rooms. I wanted to create something beautiful and calming, but also characters that might spark curiosity and set imaginations in motion.
A tree on the wall can simply be a tree. But it might also be home to a family of fairies. A bear could be wandering through a Swedish forest, or it could become the main character in a story a child invents entirely on their own. I don’t want to tell every story from beginning to end. Because perhaps the most exciting part only begins when a child takes the story further.
I hope Little Northlings can help create some of those small moments of shared discovery between children and adults. Moments when a picture becomes a question, and a question becomes a story.
When a child suddenly looks at a character and says:
“Do you know what happened to her yesterday?”
And just like that, the drawing is no longer only mine. Their story has begun.
References and Further Reading
Helle Hovgaard Jørgensen & Mona Pagaard Nielsen (2023). Fortællekraft og legekraft – Materialer, aktørskab og lytning i LegeKunst-forløb. BUKS – Tidsskrift for Børne- & Ungdomskultur, 39(67).
Paul L. Harris (2022). Children’s Imagination. Cambridge University Press.
Sandra W. Russ (2021). Pretend Play: A Microcosm of Creativity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Lifespan Development of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.