Bill Howard: “What you have in folk art and folk literature is a kernel of truth.”

Storytelling is the most ancient of arts, practiced long before tales were written.

The legacy of the teller of tales will continue Wednesday night at the South Pasadena Library with Bill Howard.

“Stories, folk tales, are a type of literature that (is) very close to our inner psyches” Howard said. “What you have in folk art and folk literature is a kernel of truth. It’s like a stone that’s been in the river and it’s been ground and ground until the superfluous is gone and the best part remains.”

Howard, 40, has been fascinated with folk tales since he was a fifth-grader in San Gabriel and his parents gave him a copy of the book “Life Magazine Treasury of American Folk Lore.”

“As a kid, I did my best to escape from the mundane, and telling stories is a way to escape,” he said.

Later, as an adult teaching high school students, he told stories to help his students understand the material.

“I’d be teaching ‘Antigone,’ and would say that she was Oedipus’ daughter, and the students would ask who’s Oedipus, and I’d have to tell them that story,” he said.

Howard has been storytelling for other audiences since 1987, while continuing to teach humanities at Sylmar High School.

“Storytelling is the avocation,” he said.

It is not as simple an undertaking as one might think, Howard said.

While watching the film “Aladdin” recently, “I realized that what Disney does, I do,” he said. “But I don’t do it with drawings. I do it with the mind.

“When I tell a story, it’s as if I’m transported. You see the action taking place in your mind’s eye, then relate what’s happening. When the audience is with me it’s like a shared hallucination. It’s like sharing a vision.”

Howard isn’t sure which stories he will tell Wednesday.

“I usually don’t know until I’m up there. The types of stories I tell will depend on how I feel. And it will also depend on who I see is there.”

All ages are welcome. The tales begin at 7 p.m. in the community room of the library at 1100 Oxley St.--or a long time ago, in a land, or perhaps even a galaxy, far, far away. . . .