Nine-year-old Amara used to hide behind her mother's leg at pickup time. Eight months into our Kids Book & Storytelling Forum, she asked to go first.
Every Saturday morning, a small group of children gathers in a bright community room to read, retell, and act out stories together. For most of them, it starts as a quiet activity — a chance to sit with a book. For Amara, it became something much bigger.
Finding the Words
Amara joined the forum shy and soft-spoken, often letting other children answer first. Her facilitator, one of our trained program volunteers, noticed early on that Amara loved stories — she just wasn't ready to tell them out loud. Rather than push her into the spotlight, the program gave her small, low-pressure ways to participate: reading a single line, choosing which story the group would read next, drawing a scene from that week's book.
Week by week, those small steps added up.
"The first time I read out loud, my hands were shaking. Now I don't even look at my notes."
— Amara, age 9, Storytelling Forum participantA New Kind of Confidence
By the sixth month, Amara was volunteering to read aloud most weeks. By the eighth, she asked to go first — something her mother says she "never would have imagined" at the start of the program. The forum's end-of-season showcase, where children present a story to an audience of family and community members, has become one of the highlights of the program calendar.
Confidence built on a stage doesn't stay on the stage. Amara's mother has noticed the change at home too — more questions asked in class, more hands raised, more willingness to try something new without needing to be asked twice.
What's Next
Amara has already asked her facilitator if she can help welcome new children to the group next season — a small but telling sign of how far she's come. Stories like hers are the reason the Kids Book & Storytelling Forum keeps running every year, and why it depends on volunteers willing to show up, week after week, for children who are finding their voice.
