Except they really aren’t.
They are not (for the most part) familiar stories, which means you can’t use background knowledge. They are not simple stories, which means lots of words are needed. IMO these stories don’t belong in a Chinese L1. You might get away with them in a language with cognates, if you’re conscientious about making the cognates comprehended instead of just assuming they are. And many non-native speakers of English just “love” English (often, actually German!) fairy tales and assume that all native speakers of English know and love all of them too — but we don’t. And the younger the person, the less likely they are to know the less common (read: no Disney movie yet) fairy tales.
And then there’s the biggest lack of all — student ownership. These are not “their” stories. They have no input into them. They are stories they are sitting there listening to, and worst of all, no one knows at the time whether or not they understand because no one asks. It’s well worth your time to get really good at personalizing or customizing a story skeleton rather than just telling stories.
I won’t make a hard pronouncement about other languages, the one with phonetic alphabets and cognates, but I am quite certain in saying this: Story Listening does not belong in L1 Chinese. Or most of L2 except in non-acquisition-focused activities (using known language and language no one is expected to acquire and read immediately) as Diane Neubauer does (sharing cultural stories, the stories behind Tang poems, etc. in simple language. But please also keep in mind, she’s been doing this for a long time, so she’s staying in bounds and getting high reps.) After L3, when they have some language and most of the structure is acquired, go for it. If you really think that’s the best use of your time (which I still take leave to doubt even at that level, but that’s another story).
Chinese. Is. Different. Because, Literacy.
Story Listening can be useful to straighten out sloshers — kids who already have a lot of loose, disconnected language in their heads. Those kids need to hear the words they already know (have memorized) in the right places and the right forms and attached to connected meaning. That’s what they have lacked in the past with non-CI instruction. However, with sloshers, the biggest issue is generally to get them to listen to language they believe they already know, and SL doesn’t allow them to personalize the input, so that’s one more layer of challenge for classroom management and engagement. SL is definitely not so great for putting language in the head solidly in the first place, because of the lack of repetition and comprehension checks and the lack of expectation that the language will be mastered near the time the story is listened to. We need “micro-fluency” in Chinese in L1-2 to drive reading that isn’t based on old-fashioned memorization of characters. That’s what the SL people don’t get, because they have not taught Chinese and dealt with literacy in an opaque script.
SL is a fine technique for people who are not held accountable in the shorter term (no assessment until June, perhaps) or who have no pacing guide, or who (especially!) don’t have to deal with Chinese/Japanese/non-Western alphabet literacy. Unless you really want to force your students to memorize characters out of context. I sure don’t. Been there, had that done to me.
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