Crystal Coast Storytelling Festival 2014

IMG_0978Story Squad was featured at the 2014 Storytelling Festival of the Crystal Coast in Morehead City, NC.  We entertained 300 children from daycares and summer camps with folktales from around the world in the morning at the Crystal Coast Civic Center, and then in the afternoon, we shared tales with about 30 children and their families in the United Methodist church.  In conjunction with the NC public library summer reading program, “Fizz, Boom, Read!” we shared stories that helped explain the natural world, answering that oft-asked question, “why?”  Why does the water in the ocean rise and fall (because an old woman keeps picking up and putting back into the sea, a huge rock that blocks the ocean’s drain)?  Why does coyote howl (because he tried to trick little dove and steal her song, but little dove tricked him into biting a rock, and he lost his teeth and howls because of the pain)?  Why is coyote’s tail gray, why does squirrel’s tail arch over his head, why is chipmunk striped, why does frog have no tail, and why can you rub two sticks of the willow tree and get fire (because coyote and his friends stole fire from the Fire Beings and got scorched for their troubles)?  Folktales give us an alternate view of the world….they were the stories people told, BEFORE we told the current story of science, in order to explain our world.