Thembi Palmer is a self-professed introvert — though that might be difficult to believe.
As founder of Imagine More Story Adventures, Palmer spends her time in front of large crowds of children and their parents, singing, dancing and playing instruments. She leads groups in movement exercises — leaning into a standing banana pose or skipping around the room. She plays with puppets and other props.
Palmer’s goal — like that of so many educators — is to make reading and storytelling fun so that kids develop a love of stories and become active readers. Her readings aren’t the quiet, library sessions many remember from growing up. They’re immersive and encourage kids to laugh and dance while interacting with the book.
Palmer’s strategies are key to developing early literacy — how a child interacts with books before they can read and write. Making reading immersive and exciting for very young children translates to more interest in reading and writing as kids get older. And that helps them become proficient readers.
This is important: In Philly, 71 percent of fourth graders read below grade level, and of the 26 big city school districts in the U.S., we rank fourth from the bottom in reading.
Palmer has partnered with a number of large Philly institutions — the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Please Touch Museum — to host interactive readings, as well as literacy organizations, like Read by Fourth. This year, she is expanding her work to include parents and teachers, as well as more kids.
“There’s no template for every child,” she says. “Many children learn through movement and touching things, and so sitting is not the optimal situation for them.”
“A lot of kids think of it [reading] as horrible homework. I want them to have such a fun time that,when a book is pulled out, they say, oh my gosh, what’s in it? What are the words gonna say? And then that develops into a love of reading for a lifetime.” — Thembi Palmer
Meeting kids where they are … literally all over the world
Palmer grew up in Liberia until her family moved to the U.S. in 1990 when she was 11. She attended Temple University, met her husband here, and lived in Pennsylvania for several years, until in 2011, her husband’s job took them to India.
What would eventually become Imagine More Story Adventures began while she was homeschooling her kids, ages four and six in India time, and looking for things they could do outside the house. She recalled that she used to take her oldest to mommy and me music classes when they were living in the U.S.
“I can sing — I sang in my church choir,” Palmer says. “So I was like, let me see if I can start a mommy and me music class.”
She started teaching music and movement classes for expat parents and their children in India — and kept teaching when her family expanded to five and moved to the UK. She added storytelling and literacy components and started developing a curriculum.
Palmer, who studied speech language pathology at Temple and had worked with autistic children before moving abroad, wanted to create something that was interactive and immersive for the kids. She knew from homeschooling her own children that kids have different learning styles — and that they could change as they age. Her youngest son, in particular, had trouble focusing while sitting still.
“My son was not sitting at the table,” she says. “He’s a very kinesthetic learner. He has to have a bunch of toys to just help him focus. And I thought, how many times have I been in the class where moms or dads are kind of embarrassed because their kids are roaming around? That was me at one point. That’s why I always say in my class, this is a judgment free zone. Kids are free to roam about the cabin.”
When she moved back to the U.S. in July 2020, she wanted to keep doing this work, but Covid prevented gatherings. So she took a pause. She reached out to literacy groups, like Read by Fourth, and asked about volunteering. They asked if she could bring her interactive storytelling to large outdoor events.
Palmer was a bit intimidated — she’s shy and introverted, remember. In India and in England, she led her activities in preschools and mom groups (which she hosted in her home). The settings were intimate. It was easy to sing and play pretend as she read stories and engaged with children.
But she showed up. Her first outdoor reading session was at a park where they were installing a new Little Free Library. She had to pivot quickly — she planned an activity geared toward preschoolers, but children of all ages showed up; there were block party vibes and kids playing with giant checkerboards. Luckily, her internal drive kicked in.
“Once I focus on the kids, everything melts away,” she says
Creating a love of storytelling
Palmer loves to make reading interactive. If she has a story about a bear, she’ll lead the kids on a bear hunt through the park as they go. She’ll play with a bear puppet. Kids will get on their hands and knees and bear walk. She’ll show videos of bears eating and swimming, so kids can see how they move. They’ll talk about the different seasons and touch snowballs or fresh grass to think about nature.
She’s worked with a geography teacher to create a movement-around-the-world activity, and teaching artists to lead the kids in crafts. Most of her offerings are targeted at young children — infants through preschool age — but she also has programs for children well into elementary school. For older kids, she offers writing workshops too, that can help them imagine interactive stories of their own.
“It’s not just me coming to read,” she says. “I don’t like being the performer on stage. I’m like, get up here with me. We do this together. I have parents that jump in and are onstage with me.
And I love that. It’s good modeling for the kids to see adults doing it, but also for them to be involved.”
Sibylla Shekerdjiska-Benatova is director of A Book A Day in Philly, an organization that promotes literacy by sending books to young readers throughout the city. She reached out to Palmer after seeing her work on social media. Palmer has since collaborated with them on a series of events, emceed a 2024 Community Voices fundraiser with A Book a Day and wrote a poem for their Archive of Letters and Voices project. Now, Palmer’s on their advisory board.
“When she walks out of the room, kids just follow her. They don’t want her to leave,” Shekerdjiska-Benatova says.
Improving early literacy
Palmer doesn’t track her work beyond the packed Google calendar that documents all her past and upcoming events. She typically does 12 to 15 events per month. The way she measures her impact is anecdotal: To her, success is when kids come up to hug her, when a shy child jumps into an activity, or when someone asks her if she’s coming back to read again.
Palmer loves to make reading interactive. If she has a story about a bear, she’ll lead the kids on a bear hunt through the park as they go. She’ll play with a bear puppet. Kids will get on their hands and knees and bear walk.
She remembers doing a reading at a library in the first few months when things were opening up after Covid. There was a boy in the crowd, who was pretty young, and clearly nervous. Palmer asked him to help out by passing props to his neighbors. She slowly encouraged him to engage more and more with the performance. By the end, he was fully into it.
“Being shy myself, I’m able to spot other shy dudes and kids that are kind of withdrawn, and so I really try to focus on them and make them feel comfortable,” Palmer says. “The mom, at the end, came up to me and she was like, He was born during Covid. This is his first interaction with other kids. And she said, I’ve never seen him open up like this. I’ve never seen him participate and even try to respond to other kids.”
She also works with parents to find books that will keep their kids interested in reading after they leave her readings. She teaches them how to find books that will appeal to their children, especially if they’re reluctant readers. If kids are interested in dinosaurs, she’ll recommend books about dinosaurs and tell them to check out all of the library books on the subjects they love.
It’s a strategy she’s seen work with kids and parents in her programs, but also one she learned from her own children. Her son was really fixated on the Titanic and getting books about it was key to helping him become a reader.
“A lot of kids think of it [reading] as horrible homework,” Palmer says. “I want them to have such a fun time that,when a book is pulled out, they say, oh my gosh, what’s in it? What are the words gonna say? And then that develops into a love of reading for a lifetime.”
Palmer may not measure her impact, but a lot of research backs up her approach. Interactive reading can improve children’s imaginations and play quality, help them feel more engaged in learning and help with later reading comprehension. We won’t improve our childhood literacy rates unless we engage kids from an early age.
“[Palmer] demonstrates that playful learning is absolutely possible, that you can sort of disguise learning in play, so that it just happens automatically. There’s no resistance,” says Heseung Song, founder and CEO of Mighty Engine, a creative agency that has worked on a number of early literacy initiatives, including Right2Read Philly and Read by Fourth. Song is a developmental psychologist and has worked with Palmer on a few projects, including one where kids recorded the Freedom School’s alphabet song, which helps kids match sounds to the letters. Palmer helped entertain the kids while they waited for the recording process.
“She’s such a joy to work with and she clearly knows how to work with young people,” says Song
Workshops for adults
In 2022, Palmer published a children’s book, This Book May Make You Do Things, which endeavors to bring her interactive and kinesthetic style to parents reading at home or educators in the classroom. When she does author visits, she brings an obstacle course and encourages kids to skip and spin or do puzzles and worksheets like the characters in her book.
“The concept is, whatever the reader is doing the listener has to do as well. There’s jumping and spinning and twirling and itching and sneezing — all these actions that they’re learning the words for, but there’s also movement,” Palmer says.
This year, she’s offering workshops focused on adults that are also centered on storytelling. She has four offerings right now — one on how to be a more engaging and interactive storyteller, one on team building, one on journaling and one on artistry. The workshops teach parents, caregivers and educators how to create immersive reading experiences, but they also offer a place for them to share their own stories and find support. There would be childcare, so caregivers could have some alone time, but also a space where they can talk about the challenges of parenthood. She’s also offering team-building workshops and engaging story-telling training sessions which could help support educators.
“It acts as a safe space where people come and communicate, connect and meet each other,” Palmer says.
This addition brings her back to what she’d initially envisioned, when she started this work through mommy and me classes in India. She would read to kids and sing, but she was also talking with moms about the challenges they face and their kids’ milestones. She’s reached both moms and dads with her work, but mothers tend to do most of the childcare and research has found they often feel lonelier than dads. These kinds of resources are something she wished she’d had when she was a young mother.
“When my kids were younger, I didn’t have access, or wasn’t able to tap into what now seems to be a really great community, a safe space for moms to get together and do simple things,” Palmer says. “I’m coming back full circle to where I started.”
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