Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.162 | feat. Hanah Ehrenreich from The Storytelling Festival of Children

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Hanah Ehrenreich on the Storytelling With Children Festival (May 17) at The MOST in Syracuse Host Noah Chrysler interviews Hanah Ehrenreich, festival organizer and a Syracuse common councilor, about the free Storytelling With Children Festival on May 17 at The MOST in Syracuse, created to address a literacy crisis by giving kids a “why” through imagination and oral storytelling. The day includes a sensory-friendly hour with deaf storytellers using ASL, performances by storytellers and authors including Bruce Coville, Vanessa Johnson, Perry Ground (Onondaga Turtle clan), Christine Darrow, and Paul Solan, plus activity stations like an illustration workshop led by Sue Ketter. Author and folklorist Adam Gidwitz will record a live, kid-participatory “Syracuse fairytale” for the Grim Grimmer Grimace podcast; his sessions are the only ticketed portion, with VIP meet-and-greet options. An adult-focused panel, “The Art and Industry of Storytelling,” will be held at 7 PM at Parthenon Books. Info is on Facebook and Instagram. 00:00 Welcome to Good News York 00:28 Why Storytelling Matters 02:18 Festival Schedule and Highlights 03:16 Grimm Tales with a Twist 05:49 How Hanah Got Started 07:18 Kids as Co Storytellers 08:47 Storytelling for Adults Too 12:27 Favorite Childhood Stories 14:52 Storytelling Tips and Impact 18:51 Access Food and Festival Vision 21:10 Where to Learn More 21:31 Closing Thanks and Sign Off

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler, and today we are sitting down with Hanna Erin Reich. Welcome, Hannah. Hi. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me. Fantastic.

Hannah, for the people who don't know, can you introduce yourself quick? I am Hannah Arunreich. I am the festival organizer for storytelling with children. I am also a common counselor in the city of Syracuse. Fantastic. What is the storytelling with children festival? What is this? Tell us about this.

So once upon a time, you were a little kid, and somebody told you a story, and it stuck with you. And whether that was Brer Rabbit, or it was a tale of Norse gods, or it was the Eric the Viking legends that my mother read to me when I was little, it was a story that through the drama and the emotions lived in your head. And that was before you ever picked up a book. I love children's books, and I love children's literature, but you need to give children a why as to why they're even interested.

We have a real crisis right now, and it's a crisis in literacy. It's a crisis in literacy skills. But so, how do we fix that? We have a lot of different literacy resources that are working to fix that, and they're doing a great job. But outside of book buddies and outside of our phenomenal teachers in schools who are working day and night to make sure kids are reading on grade level, the children themselves, and the families need resources. And resources mean a lot of different things.

For this festival, the resource we can give is the gift of imagination. We can give a why for why children should be interested in books. And it comes down to storytelling. It comes down to this ancient art that used to be literacy for 3,000, 5,000 years. Oral storytelling was the way we transmitted information that we shared stories, that we shared history. The story of Troy and the battle with Sparta and all these things, they were oral history. So we are trying to bring that back to Central New York, and we are starting with the storytelling with children festival on May 17th.

Fantastic. Cool. So this is an event about oral storytelling happening on May 17th. Tell us about the event and what can people expect if they showed up and looked around. What could they see and what would they experience? So we are partnered with the most, who is the best museum. ever, right? Everybody who goes there loves, right? You find every time I go there, there's a new exhibition that I am totally enamored with. So the most opens at 9.30 in the morning on May 17th, and it starts with a sensory-friendly hour. And we have a group of deaf storytellers who are going to be doing ASL sign during that time. And we are going to be introducing Adam Gidwitz.

Adam Gidwitz is an author and folklorist, and he tells grim fairy tales. retells them, but with a twist, he tells them with children. And have you tried reading green fairy tales recently? Yeah, they're a little dark. They're super dark. Like, they're gruesome. Sure. So I'm going to give you a vignette, and then I'll tell you the rest of the agenda for the festival.

But the vignette is this. In the Wizard King, a very tyrannical dictator plays hide and seek with his subjects, and if he finds you, he kills you. Very dark. So in this part of the story where he finds somebody and he's going to brutally murder them, Adam Gidwitz says to the kids who are his live studio audience, okay, what is the worst way to die? And the kids are like, oh. Because who asked children that question, right?

But the kids then come up with these fantastical notions of death, right? They're like, well, falling for a really long distance or starving to death or drinking liquid iron and having your insides liquidate or having your eyeballs fall out or something. So he goes, okay, so then the Wizard King takes this guy up to the tallest tower and pushes him off and he falls for a really long time. And then improbably in the middle of the fall,

he drinks liquid iron because he's starving to death and then his inside liquidate and then his eyeballs fall out and then he's eaten by mice. The kids are laughing so hard by the end of that because it is gruesome and it's dark. The world is kind of dark. But they've created this. pocket where they're in charge. So they're no longer scared. But it keeps the integrity of the

story while at the same time allows the kids to master their fears. It's wonderful. So Adam Gidwitz is going to be doing a Syracuse fairy tale, a new Grimm, grim grimmer grimist, and he's going to be recording it in the Explorodom. I will say that the entire festival is free. You rock up any time during the day you will be able to hear storytellers, Bruce Covill, who's the wonderful author of Sarah's Unicorn and my teacher is an alien. Vanessa Johnson, who's a griot. She does African black storytelling. Perry Ground, who is part of the Onondaga Turtle Clan. He's doing Tales of the Longhouse. Christine Darrow, who's writing a book about North Country Tales, including how Santa Claus came to be. Paul Solon, who's a Magid. All these

folklorists will be there all day and it's free. Come to the most and we'll get you in. You'll listen to them. The only ticketed part is the Adam Goodwitz events. And there are tickets on sale both to meet and greet with him, a VIP ticket, and to be part of this studio audience and be part of the storytelling process in the Syracuse fairy tale. Fantastic. So it's cool. No, that's wonderful. I mean, that sounds really exciting. And that's wonderful. Hannah, how did you get involved in this world? I have a story that lives in my head. Okay. And it's a story from Greek myths and legends. It started with Syracuse City School District. It started at Blodgett School with a lady who must have been in her 70s with bright red hair when I was in first grade. And she walked into this

common area and she started telling us myths and legends. She taught us about Persephone. We counted pomegranate seats while we ate them. She told us tales about Hera's jealousy. Like what what is a first grader know about jealousy, right? Or Daedalus and Icarus and grief. And through these stories, we understood more. We processed more. We lived. These stories got me into reading. And we need these kind of triggers. We need to find out a way to get children to open the book. And the best way to do it is to give them the stories ahead of time. Let them listen. Before they're reading so that they know that there's a why behind it. They know that there's something out there that's amazing for them to find. And it's not just listening. You don't want to, when you're

listening to a story, right, you're thinking about your taxes. Even if you're seven, you're like, oh my God, there's got to be something else I can do, right? You're bouncing around. People are like telling you to shush. No, we don't do any of that for storytelling with children. You're part of the story. So the kids are going to be involved in every, part of the storytelling, the activity stations. Sue Keeter, who's a local illustrator, nationally known, because we have incredible talent in this area too. She's going to be leading an illustration workshop where kids will illustrate a book in 40 minutes and they get to take that home, a book that they made that they fully illustrated. Unreal. We're also connecting to

existing literacy resources. Our goal at the festival was to show through art, that early literacy is possible. And we wanted to connect with the literacy resources that already existed. We wanted to collaborate, not compete, because that's also really important. There's a lot of work being done for third graders who are missing their milestones, for sixth graders who have been passed along to their detriment. We need to start early, and we also need to have things that engage children at those different levels. So the festival is really geared for kids age three to 12.

but there's stuff for every single kid. They're not going to be sitting and passively listening. They are going to be telling the stories themselves. And I think that that makes a huge difference because they want to be storytellers. They want to be at the center of the action. They all imagine themselves the hero, and we need to make that true.

Absolutely. Wonderful. What a wonderful mission. Something that I've noticed is that I think adults lose their love for storytelling as they grow into adulthood, right? Like it's something that we all are familiar with these children, but, you know, as you grow up, I think it's something that you spend less and less time, you know, how many adults sit there and read a book every day at the end of the night,

right? You know, as a kid, before I went to sleep, I would read a chapter book every night, right? You were excited about it, too, right? What's going to happen next? I don't want to put this down. Yeah. Is there anything from storytelling that you think, you know, would enrich the lives of adults, you know, if they re-engaged with that practice? Oh, 100%. Actually, so it's really funny. We say that this is the storytelling with children festival, and yet I'm telling adults about it, and every single one of them is like, can I come? Yes, you can come to the festival. Come to the festival. It's great. What I will say is that today I'm an astronaut. Yeah. We can be inspired all the time, right? Inspiration, creativity, imagination, curiosity. These are all things that go into storytelling.

I became a parent and was really thought I'd be good at the nighttime bedtime storytelling, and I suck at it. Like, I'm really bad. I don't believe that for a second. I don't believe that for a second. Are you kidding? You know, I know why grim fairy tales are dark because that's where I went to. I was all like morality plays about justice and my kids like, I'm having nightmares.

It's me. I'm the problem. But I also realized that growing up in Central New York, I knew not a single, one of the Onondaga's folk tales. Like, I don't know that. And I was ashamed to admit that. I'm so excited that Perry Ground is going to be one of our storytellers because he has a whole repertoire of tales from the Longhouse that are Onondaga Turtle Clan stories.

And I can't wait to sit and listen and learn and be able to tell other kids in the future about them. But I will say that, like, parents and care. caregivers need to understand that this is an innate part of being human. Do you know what when people say, oh, I don't dance, like I'm not good at it? Like you're a human. Right. People move their bodies.

Right. I'm not good at singing. Singing is something that we do culturally, every community. Storytelling is there too. And you can be great at it. You can be terrible at it, but you can always get better at it. So they're at 7 p.m. on May 17th at Parthenon Books, which is, are phenomenal independent bookstore downtown,

we are going to be hosting a panel called the art and industry of storytelling. So if you have a story that you've been sitting on or noodling on or thinking about writing or you think about telling, you should come and check this out. It's an adult-focused panel, and it's got Bruce Covell, Vanessa Johnson, and Perry Ground, and a number of other storytellers

who are going to be sharing how they did this, how they, as artists, as storytelling, became either published or promoted how they do this professionally and where the insights are. It's not just like what their personal journey has been, but really just about we all have something to contribute and you can make it your main thing. And that would be really like you do. Like you're a storyteller here. Yeah.

I think this is great. So yeah. Cool. I think people should come out to that. Fantastic. I think so too. I think absolutely they should. come out to that. I also love that you're dressed as an astronaut. I was like, I can't believe I

didn't start with a question like that. Well, I have a question for you, though. Sure. Yeah, so I said that the Greek myths were the things that started me off that really lived in my mind. How about you? What is the story that from your childhood captivated you? Yeah, so there's a bunch of various answers to that. Early, early on, my mother, my mom is a fifth grade teacher. She's one of the best people in the world. And she, uh, very, when I was very young, she would read me a few bedtime stories. Uh, one of them was Eric Carl's, uh, very hungry caterpillar, which I really enjoyed, especially with all the, the little, uh, you know, the, the little pages. The sensory, the pop out so you can see the holes. The holes and that, yeah, he ate this on this day. The best. Um,

and then she also, uh, she read to me the, the little engine that could. That was a big story in my house. And I love that book. And I sometimes feel like the little engine occasionally. But then later on, it was also like Greek myths. I really like Percy Jackson when I was growing up. So good. The best. Yeah. So so, so good. Yeah. That had a huge impact on me. And then I was a big Harry Potter kid as well. Yeah. And then I really liked Aragon. I know, I mean, nowadays, it's cool to like crap on the Aragon series. But I really love that entire series. Those are my favorite books ever. So I'm really old. So I didn't, we didn't do Aragon Dragons. we did like Anne McCaffrey dragons, which is so problematic in a lot of ways in terms of gender norms, but like really also this fascinating world and spaceflight dragons, you know, you really

kind of build it. Weird question. Yeah. Did you ever read Mike Mulligan in the Steam Shovel? Yes. Yes. I've heard of that book. When I was, I don't remember it because I was probably 10 or less.

So when rooted in Central New York, the local legend is that that was based on a real story that happened during one of of S.U.'s building phases. And they actually found the steam shovel in somebody's basement. Really? Again, you're going to have to do the research yourself, but I remember reading an article about it.

And I was like, it's Mike Mulligan in the steam shovel. Cool. But we have to root ourselves here, you know? Like, stories give us a sense of place. We have so much that we can build off of. We have all these stories that really should be told. And we're starting off this year, the first year for storytelling with children here, so with these authors. And it's going to be wild.

Awesome. Since studying storytelling, since being more involved in storytelling communities, do you think you have learned any storytelling tips, tips, tactics, things that you think make stories more engaging? Anything that you've learned that you can share with us? My first exposure to Adam Goodwitz, and incidentally, when I said, when I told my seven-year-old that I was, was going to be calling Adam Gidwitz, I asked her if she had any questions for him. And she's like, wait, why are you talking to Adam Gidwitz? Like, I want to talk to Adam Gidwitz. I wish I'd recorded this conversation because it was so cute. She was real upset, too. She was like, wait. And I was like, well, listen, I don't know yet what I'm going to ask him if he'd

come here, but I don't know what he's going to say. And she was just like, I want to know where the two brothers part two is. I still haven't found that on Spotify and it's really making me mad and I don't understand how this ended this way and she's like and they didn't ask this question and whoa it was like oh it was an open uh open pandora's box there um but i've learned a lot from the grim grim grimmer grimace podcast in terms of telling stories and the thing about it is it's not just adam reading and then kids responding it's again the children inform the narrative and there are really problematic things in Grim Grimmer Grimmist, right? Or in Grim Fairy Tales. There are really problematic things in Hans Christian Anderson. You know, discussion about the Little Mermaid,

both as the live action and as the Disney version, and what people do when they make kids stuff less scary or they try to, but at the same time it takes away from some of the emotional impact of the story. But Cinderella's sisters in the original story cut off their toes to fit into that glass slipper. There are high stakes here, and the kids understand that. But the children, as participants, as thinkers, as kids who can take a story and tear it to pieces and then put it back together again and say, I didn't understand why this had to happen this way. I think we could have made a different choice here. But at the same time, I understand the anger, or I understand the jealousy or I understand the grief that drove this character, this decision, that builds not just

an awareness that stories exist and characters live in our minds, that books are important, but it builds critical reasoning skills. It builds people who can say, this didn't make sense to me or I can't get along with that person because this is what they do and this is how we can fix it. And I don't know a single adult out there who doesn't need that skill. And I don't need a I don't know a single kid out there who isn't more emotionally equipped for the world when they have heard these stories and participated in them. And I've seen my kids grow through this experience. And I'm looking forward to seeing 300 kids from Central New York or more come to the most on May 17th

and embrace the experience of telling stories, being the storyteller, learning from storytellers in our area, and coming out with stories that grow in their minds eye. Absolutely. Well, I think that's very powerful. There's a bunch of places that I want to go. I mean, I don't know. First, my first thought in my head is that I think those stories that don't speak down to children like you're talking about, I think that that's a very powerful thing. I think of like cartoons that I used to watch as a child. Like Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my favorites, right? And there's a lot of dark themes in that show that are not watered down for children, you know, and therefore, like, like that show was one of the most popular shows for my generation ever, you know. And I don't know. So like the idea of like not straying away from dark themes is very powerful. But yeah, I think storytelling is a very powerful thing and fantastic. Cool.

Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to speak about before we end this interview here? So we decided to have storytelling with children at the most because it's a place that families are comfortable, that they already know how to get to and how to go. The Most has a number of different admissions policies that are wonderful. If you're a military family, you get in for free. If you have an EBT card, bring it with you. You'll get in for free. We want to make sure that nobody comes to this festival and is turned away.

So you have a whole day of storytellers. Oh, we're also going to have a mac and cheese bar. Ooh. Yeah, so you get hungry midway through the festival. Mac and cheese will be for sale. There'll be concessions and snacks. Like, don't worry. The kids will be fine, you know.

Well, we want to make sure that people feel comfortable. They can stay at the festival all day. They can go. They can come. Readmission is there. And then for the kids who want to meet Adam Gidwitz, you are going to get a fancy festival sticker that the storytellers can sign an autograph for you. You are going to be able to sit in the Explorer Dome with a boom mic and other mics and be part of the story.

And there's going to be a new Grim, Grimmer, Grimmis podcast. episode coming out of this that we will be sending to all of our media partners and all of our literacy partners for full distribution across Central New York so that the kids in Central New York can hear themselves telling these grim fairy tales. I want us to embrace the idea that children have events on an annual basis that they look forward to that they participate in, that eventually they'll outgrow, but that will inform their trajectory. We have a lot of great organizations doing one-off events, and that's good. But predictability and understanding that this is a place for them to be artists themselves, when we get to year two of storytelling with festival,

storytelling with children festival, it's going to be game-changing. So I'm really excited about year one. I hope everyone comes out and sees us and participates, but I really want to see this happen on an annual basis where we embrace the art and artistry of storytelling. in Syracuse and for all of central New York. So everybody is welcome. Come down from Oswego, come from Cayuga, come from Madison, come from all parts of Syracuse. We have something for you.

Fantastic. Where can people find more information? They can find it on our Facebook page, Storytelling with Children Festival and our Instagram. They can, yeah, that's mostly where they can find it. We will have flyers up and there will be stuff attached to this website. and other websites. So you can find us there.

Beautiful. Hannah, thank you very, very much. And thank you guys for watching. My name is Noah Chrysler. This is Good News York. Have a great rest of your day.