In 1991, I faced my first audience as a professional storyteller. I was hired to talk about where ideas come from. Two years before I had joined The Society of Children’s Book Writers and filled out a form saying I was willing to go to schools and talk about where ideas come from. When the school called, I had long forgotten the form and in the course of the conversation pretended that I knew exactly what the woman was talking about. I took the job, knowing that I had two months to brainstorm with Betty, my late sister, who always knew what to do. By showtime I had a 45-minute presentation, which included slides from my sketch books and stories about my process designing and producing a line of greeting cards featuring a band of frogs in colorful costumes. I combined this with stories about my childhood, what influenced my choice to be an artist. I also had 20-minutes worth of stories for 1st graders. So off I went!
I began in the library with the first graders. To my surprise they were not such a tough room. Especially twenty-eight years ago, before digital devices. Seems they hadn’t really hadn’t changed that much since I was a first grader; still excited to be out in the world, eager to learn stuff, plugged into curiosity. I told a slightly “chilling” story called Tillly, which I had learned from the iconic Jackie Torrence, The Story Lady from North Carolina. This story was told to enslaved children in the antebellum South. Tilly plays a game every night to help her fall asleep, pretending something is coming up the stairs—and of course we have to count each – step – up – to – Tilly’s – room before ending with a big GOTCHU! Kids have loved this story for ages. Outside the library I stopped at the water fountain where I met a boy in a wheelchair who heard the story. He said, You almost gave me a heart attack! and his smile couldn’t have been any bigger. I learned later that he had been in a car accident during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, that hit the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17th, killing 67 people. And yet, there he was, with his classmates, being thrilled and chilled by stories, happy to be out in the world.
But I had so little faith in how well those middle schoolers in the multi-purpose room would receive the slides and stories. I thought, This will never fly. They have too many other distractions, why would they want to sit and listen to stories? Boy was I wrong. You could hear a pin drop during the presentation, and they asked creative, interesting questions after. One of the teachers came up to me and said, you should be proud of yourself—you just held the attention of 350 4th, 5th and 6th graders for 45 minutes. I had been told there would be about 150 so that’s when my knees got weak and the smell of dried milk made me a little nauseous. As I left the building, another teacher ran up to me with a stack of letters, written by her 5th graders and I left the building floating on cloud nine with a newfound faith in the power of oral tradition storytelling.
When I read the letters, that faith multiplied. The middle schoolers had truly listened. One girl wrote, I wish I could meet your grandmother. She seemed a lot like mine. And a boy wrote, Thanks for showing us anybody can have great ideas because they’re everywhere!
Those were truly life-changing experiences that I shaped into a career. what I didn’t face up to at the time was that I not only had little faith in the power of telling stories, but by turning my back on my dream to write and illustrate original children stories (the whole reason I joined the SCBW in the first place) I was also showing what little faith I had in my own creativity. With sketch books packed away and art supplies on hold, I flew off to bring spoken stories to schools, libraries, corporations living rooms and parks. I convinced myself that because I designed visual art components for my oral tradition telling that I had not abandoned my art, only redirected it. Right. But what about Anna Gail Beasley and the Biggest Umbrella, and Anna Gail Makes Lunch for the Wind? What about The Vitterman Tales—original stories and sketches that still have not seen the light of day?
Whoa.
When I began this post, I did not know we’d end up here. I thought I’d fast forward to 2019 and talk about how preparing for the middle schoolers and first graders launched me into a universe of oral tradition storytelling where I met and worked with incredible people and how that journey led me back to a novel I started in 1988; and how that manuscript showed me how little I knew about writing a novel (and is languishing on floppy disks that’s how long ago it was) and how were it not for that whole journey, I would never be where I am today, on the other side of knowing nothing about writing a novel, actually seeking a publisher for my second, but really first (viable) manuscript. From there I wasn’t sure how I’d wrap this up but now that Anna Gail (a little black girl in the south) and Vitterman (one of my frogs) have raised their sweet little heads—this is clearly a piece to be continued. . .
Let’s outline types of storytelling events and topics you do and for whom…and then we’ll put a Call-to-Action where they can contact you.