Vanessa Johnson, Mystery Guest

Our storytelling unit has begun! The gifted Vanessa Johnson kicked it off as our fifth mystery guest. She started her presentation with a clever interaction between herself and three future generations, played by our own Glady, Frannie and Lola! Artfully she demonstrated how stories are passed on from one generation to another and how we can all end up with hundreds of family stories to tell! Vanessa then shared one of her own personal stories – of her grandmother bravely trying to buy a dress in a fancy department store in the segregated south. Her grandmother, like hundreds of other blacks, bravely fought back the injustices forced upon her. Vanessa had time to tell two more stories. One taught us the importance of never giving up on a dream. She involved her audience by teaching them a chant which was interspersed in her tale of a frog who dreams of singing and has to repeatedly battle naysayers. Her last story was a cautionary tale told in Africa to warn children about strangers. In her story the child is told to never talk to a snake or pick it up! Hissssss…..