Just for Kids Just for Presenters: Outreach Programs How jeff Got His Groove Back FAQs © 2008 Imani Winds		Ask the Author: TOYIN SPELLMAN Where do you get your ideas? I watch lots of TV and read a whole bunch of stories. In my opinion people who write children's stories work harder than most writers to make their audience feel like they have learned something. Children's story writers make the listener or watcher feel special, that is very important to me whether I writing or playing or saying something. So that's where my ideas start, from the desire to make people feel positive. When did you become interested in writing? I first got interested in writing because my father is a writer. He used to read to my little sister and I all sorts of different things, from fairy tales to poetry. Sometimes we would even make up stories together. From then on I have always been interested in both hearing stories and creating them. In my opinion the best stories are the ones that you either see come alive before you (when acted out) or the ones told to you by a storyteller. I wanted to combine those types of storytelling in How Jeff Got His Groove Back. Where did you get all the names in the story? I'll let you guys in on a secret: some of those names in How Jeff Got His Groove Back are what we in Imani Winds call each other. For instance, Jeff's last name in the story is Jeff Scotticus. Well, that is our nickname for Jeff. The names that aren't nicknames of actual people in the group I just made up because they sounded funny. How long did it take you to write "How Jeff Got his Groove Back"? I knew that the music had to guide and explain what was happening in the story, so that was pretty easy because Imani Winds has a huge amount of music it can play. The long part of creating How Jeff Got His Groove Back was coming up with the story line. Making one little idea and one piece of music fit together was easy, but making an hour- long story is very difficult when all you have is a bunch of different little story pieces. Who taught you how to write in the style of music telling? There are only a couple of other musicians performing in the music-telling style. The group that started this type of performance is "Tales & Scales". Some of the members of Tales and Scales are friends of mine, so I went to see them perform once, and boy! Did it ever make me excited! Ever since then I have wanted to write my own music-telling story, and since I love being a part of Imani Winds so much I decided to write one for them. Nobody taught me, but the members of Imani Winds sure helped me out along the way. When you were a kid, what was your favorite story? When I was a little, little girl my favorite story was Goodnight Moon. Then when I got older my favorite was Anansi the Spider, a one of many stories about a spider from Africa. After that my favorite story was whatever I was reading or watching! I really got hooked on discovering new stories, and I'm still the same way to this day. top of page