Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Little.
Hi Vanessa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hello, and thank you for speaking with me. So, to begin, I spent the first nine years of my life in Landstuhl, Germany. My father was enlisted in the United States Army for four years and then my family remained in Germany when my father began working for AAFES. Apart from my time in Germany, I am a Colorado Springs native. My love for the arts, specifically books, reading, writing, singing, and music began when I was an infant and toddler, according to my mama. My mama used to sing children’s Bible songs to me when I was a toddler, which I remember to this day. My favourite tune at six months old was a song called “Only a Boy Named David,” and my favourite part of the song was doing the hand movements, which involved mimicking throwing a rock in the air. My earliest personal memories of reading books are from preschool ages, reading “The Little Red Hen” and stories from Aesop’s Fables like “Brer Rabbit.” I remember that stories like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel” and other similar fairy tales, did not appeal to me. I was an old soul and critical thinker, so I guess I thought it was reckless for children to be running around in dark woods talking to strangers and entering houses that were not their own. I wanted nothing to do with fairy tales, the only exceptions I made were for Cinderella and Peter Pan, because I loved Tinkerbell!
I taught myself to draw when I was about five years old and by eight years old, I started writing and illustrating my own stories. My first book was an adventure story about me and my best friend, Heidi. As I grew older, my reading preferences led to mystery stories like “The Bobbsey Twins” and “Nancy Drew” and horse books. There is not a Marguerite Henry book that I didn’t read, and in middle school, I was devouring two to three books a day on my summer vacations. I continued writing stories and somewhere in an attic or a shed are two full length self-illustrated mystery stories of 150+ pages. The stories were modeled after my favourite mystery family, “The Bobbsey Twins,” but with all the names changed and a completely original mystery plot!
While I loved the literary arts growing up, I had equal love for and excelled in mathematics and science. I excelled in social studies/history but in my K-12 education years, it was a subject in which I was the least interested. Throughout my all-white church school experience, my classmates and I learned “history” by rote memorization, as my teacher had zero teacher training. We memorized myriads of names of typical American historical figures like, Paul Revere and Lewis and Clark, and dates of wars and events like the American Revolution, Christopher Columbus, and the Mayflower. Topics like slavery were given brief lip service and brushed off with quotes like “It wasn’t really that bad.” I learned more about slavery and the Civil War by watching movies like “Roots” and “Gone with the Wind.” The topic of land acquisition and why Black people ended up in America, were presented as though Black people hopped on boats willingly and Native Americans were happy to give up their land. I knew something was up. It all sounded shady, but I didn’t have the words to label it at the time. I remember that in my third-grade history book, a very brief nod was given to Sacagawea, Pocahontas, and George Washington Carver. I was hoping to see more brown people in my history texts, but I never did.
I didn’t understand why I loathed social studies/history classes so much until I began taking classes at Pikes Peak Community College. In my third semester, I took a Western Civilization course that opened my eyes to new ways of learning about the past and the present (I became “woke” before it was a term). The instructor encouraged students to think critically through written reflections, papers, and classroom discussion on topics in the course textbook. Plus, he brought relevant present-day issues to the table for discussion. I finally had the words that I didn’t have when I was younger. Euro centered, White-washed, lacking representation. From that day forward, a new passion began to stir in me. I started unlearning and relearning history for myself on my own, seeking out classes where historical truths were presented, becoming obsessed with devouring biographies, autobiographies, and historical fiction books, watching documentaries, and experiencing living history through museums and travel.
During this time of enlightened discovery, I was a nanny, worked in daycares, taught preschool and worked in retail. A step towards becoming Lil’ Miss Story Hour came when I began working at Barnes & Noble in the late 1990s, while pursuing my teaching certification and Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics at Colorado State University-Pueblo. I began as a bookseller and because of my history working with young children, was often commissioned to conduct weekly story times and eventually became the children’s department lead. After finishing my undergraduate degrees, I moved to Washington DC and transferred to a Barnes & Noble in Bowie, Maryland. I also taught kindergarten through 8th grades in low-income schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland and Northwest Washington DC for the next five years. Because I was never given the opportunity to think critically and learn beyond the pages of my history texts during my K-12 education, I decided my classrooms would look different. Inspired by that community college professor, I extended my commitment to representation, unlearning, and relearning to my students. My classroom libraries had a variety of diverse books about history, historical figures, science, the arts, and geography. I created integrated thematic units allowing my students to decide who and what they wanted to learn about. It enabled them to learn the three R’s through a diverse tapestry of past and present contributors to American culture and history. My students learned and explored far more than the history that was confined to their textbooks. They learned social studies through dance, visual arts, culinary arts, literary arts, science, and math (yes, social studies through a mathematical lens!).
For much of my elementary teaching career, I continued to work evenings and weekends as the weekly story time reader, the children’s department lead, and the children’s events planner. At both the Citadel and Bowie Barnes and Noble stores, I developed a following of attendees, some of whom now have their own families and with whom I still keep correspondence and who have brought their children to Lil’ Miss Story Hour story times. However, it was my experiences at the Bowie store that were another stepping stone leading to the birth of Lil’ Miss Story Hour. Parents began to approach me asking me to read stories for their children’s birthday parties and playdates. It had never occurred to me that read aloud would be of interest as entertainment for a birthday party, especially since no one in Colorado ever asked for such a request (When I moved back to Colorado years later, I realized that this is partially due the fact that quality education and the arts are valued much higher on the East Coast than in Colorado). I ended up doing a few story times for some families and in 2007, decided to make a plan to turn my passion for literary arts and education into a business.
I brainstormed with several friends and settled on the name Lil’ Miss Story Hour. Then with the help of a friend who was a middle school art teacher in Las Vegas at the time, created a logo. My teacher friend told his classes about my business idea gave his students the opportunity to earn extra credit by designing a logo for Lil’ Miss Story Hour. There were three designs that I liked, but I finally settled on the one that you see on my website today. By this time, I had stepped down from all responsibilities at Barnes & Noble except for four-hour shifts on Saturdays to do story times. I had begun pursuing my Master’s Degree in Mathematics at George Mason University and continued teaching elementary school. Graduate school and teaching became my main priorities so creating Lil’ Miss Story Hour took a back seat. After finishing graduate school, I stopped teaching elementary school, and taught mathematics over the next seven years at George Mason University, American University, Colorado State University, and the University of Colorado Boulder. During this time, I remained connected with DC elementary schools as a volunteer. I also connected with Dorothy I. Heights/Benning library and created a program doing free monthly community story times until I moved back to Colorado in 2015.
In 2018, I had to take a break from college teaching due to increased symptoms of my chronic illness, pulmonary hypertension, which I had been diagnosed with in 2013. My intermittent use of oxygen and shortness of breath made managing full-time teaching responsibilities challenging. I became a substitute teacher for school districts 8, 11, and 49, began volunteering for CPCD (Community Partners for Child Development) Head Start Colorado Springs, and got back to getting Lil’ Miss Story Hour off the ground. I approached PPLD (Pikes Peak Library District), specifically the Penrose downtown Colorado Springs branch about possibly starting a volunteer partnership similar to the one I had with the library in Northeast DC. After numerous attempts to connect with someone, I gave up, realized it was not meant to be, and that they were not interested in partnering with me.
That same year, I became involved with an inclusive grassroots arts organization that supports freedom of self-expression for all individuals, called Poetry 719, and the co-director, Ashley Cornelius, put me in touch with the new coordinator for events at PPLD’s Ruth Holley Library branch. We hit it off and the Lil’ Miss Story Hour program was born!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road to getting Lil’ Miss Story Hour off the ground was definitely not all kittens and butterflies. There were some significant obstacles. The first setback being that I had to put the entire idea on the back burner to finish my graduate degree, because it was far too much to try to handle teaching, graduate school, and trying to start an organization at the same time. After that, the most challenging part in the beginning was trying to get a website up and running so that I could market myself (at the time, I had no interest in promoting Lil’ Miss Story Hour on social media platforms).
I initially reached out to some friends for help. One acquaintance was very savvy with anything involving computers, the internet, and websites. He was, unfortunately, also ADHD and it was hard to coordinate with him so that he could help me organize my ideas for laying out the site. Website building in the early 2000s was not as streamlined as it is now, so the building part was difficult. Another friend suggested I try using WordPress to build a website and even though I am also quite tech-savvy, it wasn’t user friendly for me. My friend, Lisa Pence, had just started her own business as a graphic designer in the middle part of the 2010s and offered help. We tried to use a web building platform called FatCow.com but my vision was not organized enough to use it correctly. It took a lot of troubleshooting and Lisa got busy with her business. I felt lost because I didn’t know how to organize my vision so that it would flow and abandoned building my website for several years.
In 2018, I met someone through poetry and singing open mics who had a very successful vintage shop business and a streamlined website. She agreed to sit with me for a few hours and when I told her how I wanted the site to work she basically said, “Nope! This is what you want for the kind of business you are building.” She gave me some simple pointers, drew them out on a piece of paper, then directed me to a platform called Acuity Scheduling and told me to start there. In the beginning, Lil’ Miss Story Hour was only going to be a business where I was hired to be entertainment for birthday parties, playdates, and school assemblies. So, Stephanie told me to start with a scheduling platform that I could add to my website later. She was right. Since I wanted a way for customers to book story times, it was all I needed to start. After that, I was able to make business cards that included my scheduling site and promote myself.
A couple of years later, after realizing that I wasn’t going to be able to afford to hire a web designer anytime soon, I decided to sit down one day with Wix.com and banged out a website in one day. It was easier than I had thought it would be. I had been crippled by fear, thinking that it would be too hard and I would get frustrated. But honestly, I should have known that usually once I start working at something, I always troubleshoot my way through it. I’ve always been tech-savvy but for some reason, I allowed myself to give in to fear of failure. Once I bucked up, it was all good!
Once, I had the website, another obstacle was getting clients, now that I had relocated to Colorado Springs. As I mentioned earlier, while I was living on the East Coast, my services were a hot commodity to parents and schools as the arts, education, and literary arts are highly valued there. The literary arts are valued in Colorado but they are HUGE out East. People in Colorado Springs kind of looked at me strange and said things like “Well, that’s an interesting idea,” while cocking their heads to the side, or “I wouldn’t think to hire a storyteller for a birthday party,” and rolling their eyes. I realized that what I was doing was quite unique compared to bounce houses, magic shows, and balloon animals. I guess not a lot of people saw the fun or the value in read alouds at birthday parties and play dates. So, while I wanted Lil’ Miss Story Hour to be a business in Colorado, this was part of the reason that I decided to shift the focus to community events, once I moved back to Colorado. My hope was that people would see the interactive engagement in Lil’ Miss Story Hour events and desire to book private events for their children’s social gatherings.
Lil’ Miss Story Hour definitely has a following now because of my community events and people are beginning to see the value (monetary value) of booking private events for their kiddos. More schools, arts organizations, businesses, and families are now hiring me to bring Lil’ Miss Story Hour joy to their events. For now, Lil’ Miss Story Hour is part community grassroots organization and part of literacy themed-entertainer for hire. At some point in the future, I may separate the two into distinct organizations with different names, but for now, I am content with where Lil’ Miss Story Hour is going.
The next obstacle that Lil’ Miss Story Hour is still struggling to streamline is finding places to host events where everyone feels welcome. We aren’t living in the era of “whites only” or “no Negros allowed” signs, but there is still something to be said about spaces that feel welcome for everyone one. I have been able to partner with some amazing spaces in Colorado Springs, but often I notice that some spaces tend not to draw diverse audiences. In 2021, I experimented with hosting at a variety of places downtown, on the westside, midtown, and central parts of Colorado Springs. While I would have a host of amazing BIPOC special guests to share their talents and engage with the kiddos, in more than half of the venues, the events were not well attended by BIPOC individuals from the Colorado Springs community. It feels like being Nina Simone performing at Carnegie Hall. After doing some surveying and talking to community members, I learned that this is due to some spaces not “feeling” welcoming for BIPOC. And I understand their point. When businesses and venues’ promotions for events on Instagram, Facebook, and websites only ever show white people having a great time, it does set a tone.
Generally, I have naturally been the type of person who will patronize any space. If something interests me, I am going to attend whether there are people in the space who look like me or not. But I realize not everyone is like me and people can’t be forced to try things out of their comfort zone, for example attending an event at a space where they may feel “othered.” It has to be their choice. So, I am not going to push a boulder uphill by trying to get people to come to places they don’t want to come to or don’t feel welcome. Instead, one of my goals is to open up a dialogue with some of the venues where I’ve held events about small changes that could be made to truly “present” as inclusive.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My organization is called Lil’ Miss Story Hour. It is a grass roots, Colorado Springs, Colorado-based donation-run educational organization, providing literacy themed programming and entertainment for children. I saw that in Colorado Springs, there was a need for more representation and inclusion in children’s literacy and Arts focused events. The starting point for my work was to expose children to books written and illustrated by a wide range of individuals, especially those from BIPOC communities, individuals with disabilities, military individuals, specifically women, and individuals from LGBTQIA communities. While there has been an explosion the past two years of BIPOC individuals telling their own stories and writing books in which children can see representations of themselves, the underrepresentation of BIPOC characters written and illustrated by BIPOC individuals is still lacking significantly. The statistics have not yet been updated as to how this has affected children’s literature in 2021, but 2019 Stats from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center show the following. 41.8% of main characters are White, 29.2% are Animal/Other, 11.9% are Black/African, 8.7% are Asian/American, 5.3% are Latinx, and 1.05% are Native American/Pacific Islander.
To address the importance of representation, I began the Lil’ Miss Story Hour program in July 2019 in Colorado Springs at the Ruth Holley Library. It was under the name “Stories with Miss Vanessa” (because the phrase story time/hour was used for specific PPLD events). I conducted monthly inclusive story times from July through November, ensuring that the picture books I selected elevated diverse stories and showcased diverse authors and illustrators. I had one special guest at four of the seven events I hosted that year. A translator for a Spanish bilingual story time, a youth guitar player and singer, and a local author for an LGBTQIA themed story time. When 2020 came around, the coordinator had to leave her position for health reasons, so I reached out to Hooked on Books with a plan to host story times in their bookstore for my 2020 season. I was only able to host one story time at Hooked on Books due to the coronavirus pandemic. The remaining story times for the 2020 season were held virtually via Zoom. Much to my surprise, the virtual story times were well attended and received. And as a result, Lil’ Miss Story Hour grew from 40-minute story sessions at Ruth Holley Library to 90 – to 120 – minute virtual programs that included special guests and artists ranging from dancers, singers, musicians, yogis, healers, poets, authors, illustrators, visual artists, workshop presenters, educators, entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, and more.
I now host a series of themed, in-person, monthly community story times every year, from February through November. At each story time event, two to four diverse picture book titles are read during a 90 to 120 block of time. As Lil’ Miss Story Hour grows, so does the fire of my passionate commitment to representation, unlearning, and relearning for all children because character diversity in children’s books is still appallingly underrepresented and not given much media exposure. In Colorado Springs, there is a need for more representation and inclusion in children’s literacy and Arts focused events. I want to be a part of changing that.
Not only do I want the children of Colorado Springs to see more representation and inclusion in media, but I also desire for them to find inspiration through representation from the individuals that shared art in their communities. In order to bridge the gap in this area, I try to ensure that Lil’ Miss Story Hour story time events also lift-up the voices/creative talents of a wide range of local individuals in the arts – authors, musicians, poets, visual artists, dancers, healers, etc. So, between each picture book reading at story time events, local artists are invited to share their talents with the children in whatever capacity they desire — demonstration, instruction, active engagement, lecture, workshops, etc.
I am adamant about ALL children seeing themselves represented in media, as well as in the special guests I hire for Lil’ Miss Story Hour events. My fervor along with “word of mouth” support locally and out of state, has created more momentum and Lil’ Miss Story Hour has now been featured in local newspapers, the Gazette and The Colorado Springs Independent. I am pleased with the recognition Lil’ Miss Story Hour has gained in Colorado Springs as well as a handful of cities throughout the U.S. Through Lil’ Miss Story Hour, I have collaborated in Colorado Springs, with the Colorado Springs Juneteenth Festival, COATI Uprise, The African American Historical and Genealogical Society of Colorado Springs, Colorado Blackpackers, Dear Summer Fest and The Garden to host many successful story time events in the 2021 season. Some of these events include the 2nd Annual Black History Month Story Time, the 2nd Annual Women’s History Month Story Time, the 2nd Annual National Poetry and Jazz Month Story Time, the 2nd Annual Juneteenth, Pride, and Black Music Month Story Time, and the 2nd Annual Back to School Story Time.
Additionally, successful fundraising has enabled Lil’ Miss Story Hour to support nearly 50 phenomenally talented humans and take our programming on a national tour to select U.S. states in 2021. I was able to stop in the Atlanta, GA area in May at Black Dot Cultural Center and Bookstore, for A Mother’s Day Story Time; Seattle in June at Wa Na Wari Art Center, for A Foodie Story Time; Washington DC in July at Busboys and Poets, for I Love Me Story Time; Philadelphia, in July at Sol Garden Studio, for Community Love: A Black Family Month Story Time; Los Angeles, CA in August at Reparations Club, for Count Me In: A Voting Rights Story Time; and Jackson, Mississippi in October, at The Afrikan Art Gallery and Bookstore, for Loving Black Elders Story Time.
In three short years, Lil’ Miss Story Hour has gone from hosting six community story time events with four special guests in 2019, to eleven community story time events with 23 special guests in 2020, to 17 community story time events with 48 special guests in 2021. The growth and reach are almost unbelievable to me, and as I continue to grow this organization and partner with more members of the community, I make sure to always check in with myself and my goals. Lil Miss Story Hour must always showcase diverse books so as to hopefully encourage children to grow up, become authors, and write their own stories and the stories of people who look like them for the next generations to come.
As I look to the future, I am constantly reminding myself of Lil’ Miss Story Hour’s program mission. To ensure that ALL children see themselves represented in media. With more growth and resources, I especially want to reach Colorado Springs neighborhoods in which quality children’s programming may not always extend. Neighborhoods like Hillside, K-Land, Knob Hill, Rustic Hills, Southeast Colorado Springs (specifically the 80909, 80910, 80911, 80914, and 80916 zip codes of District 4, basically lower income zip codes), and some Old Colorado City communities. And it will be my dream for Lil’ Miss Story Hour to expand its reach to children in rural communities like Calhan, Ellicott, Hanover, and Peyton. I want Lil’ Miss Story Hour to live up to being “identified as a high-impact, intergenerational program you’ve curated in the Colorado Springs community that elevates diverse stories,” which is a quote from Whitley Hadley, Director of M.O.S.A.I.C. and LGBTQ+ Resource Center at UCCS (the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs).
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
To be honest, I thought that Lil’ Miss Story Hour was going to fade quietly into the night once the pandemic hit. I was so excited to be hosting story times at a more accessible location, Hooked on Books and was excited for this new partnership with them. (By the way, Hooked on Books still supports me hardcore even though I am unable to host events in their store since Lil’ Miss Story Hour has grown so much. They rock!) They enjoyed having me host my Black History Month story time in their bookstore so much that before I left the store, they put me on the calendar for the following month to do a Women’s History Month story time. I started planning and promoting and then about a week before the event Covid hit, we had to cancel the event. At the encouragement of some friends, though, I ended up scrambling to do the event virtually on Zoom. I had never used Zoom in my life, and I was still learning how to use it as the event was happening! I had a pretty large audience and everyone was gracious, thank goodness. I continued throughout 2020 doing virtual story times. Once the summer hit and everyone was dying to get outside to do things, I was able to do a couple events in outdoor spaces.
In 2021, I was hopeful that I would be able to host more events in person rather than online, but I ran into problems with occupancy restrictions because Covid case numbers didn’t start to die down until close to April. So, for the first part of the year, I hosted hybrid story time events. Some people were ready to get out and some were still wanting to hunker down. I did my best to accommodate both scenarios. However, towards the end of the year, it got to be too much to manage and I was not pleased with my inability to interact with online attendees like I wanted. Once May arrived, I began looking for ways I could host events outside, rain or shine. But this also brought its own set of troubles. I had to be sure that I was not violating any city ordinances for permits for outdoor events. Eventually, I found some great places to host outdoors and occupancy restrictions for indoor venues loosened. By the end of the year, Lil’ Miss Story Hour was doing ok. And now I am hopeful for successful events in 2022 now that I have pretty much navigated venue spaces and worked out some great partnerships! Lil’ Miss Story Hour hopes to be here to stay for a very long time!
Contact Info:
- Website: lilmissstoryhour.com
- Instagram: @lilmissstoryhour
Image Credits
Josh Rafail
Joe Sambataro
Kuf Knotz
Jenna Jennings
