Meet Mary Jo

From hay bales to glorious stages, entertaining adults, seniors, families, children of all ages, Mary Jo has reached an estimated half a million people in some 5,000 programs. That’s what you call experienced. That means she knows how make your hosting experience smooth and successful. 

 

She never imagined this life, because as a child, she was shy and quiet. She grew up in a house of grown-ups—or so it seemed to her, because she was seven and eight years younger than her siblings. She couldn’t sleep…so she read the fairy tales by her bed. She loved them. She was compelled by them. Of course!—she was a third child, like so many protagonists, the ones who help the old man, comb the sheep's tangled fleece, feed hungry birds. It’s the third who is least powerful, but who wins the prize (metaphorical, of course) in the end—in part because she knows how it is, not to be taken seriously by her elders.

 

Looking back, Mary Jo’s work as a singing storyteller seems the natural conclusion of what came before: nurtured in a family that loved words—spoken, written, read. An Irish-American dad who told her stories, an English-French mother who loved literature and poetry (she hung it by the bathroom mirror so you could memorize as you brushed your teeth) and sent all three kids off to attain English degrees. 

 

Words, words, words! 

 

So the shy girl got her B.A. cum laude in English literature from Middlebury College. Stayed on for the Summer Language Institute, with a third year of German language studies compressed into seven weeks. (Deutsche Schule)

 

She got lost trying to make a living—sold insurance for the Prudential, learned sales and persuasive marketing, taught herself copywriting by many trips to the library (she had no money, it was free learning. It made her a die-hard believer in the library). Studied the 1950s’ greats in advertising, design, copywriting; knocked on doors and sold and produced brochures and printed promotional pieces, for four years. This was pre-internet—the world of glue pots and spec’ing type! (Does anyone know anymore what “Greeking” is? Em nuts and en nuts and dashes. Typography to the letter. When the first Mac design program arrived, it was magic!)

 

Fast forward: a year’s stint as a children’s librarian in inner city Springfield, Massachusetts. Did tons of programs for a neighboring school and immersed herself in children’s story, children’s lit., which was just flowering, when…she heard her first professional storyteller and the clouds parted, sun shone. At last, THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO. 

 

At her first interview to tell stories to preschoolers, she realized she had a splotch of toothpaste on her shirt and the kids could identify with that. Then there were libraries upon libraries and schools and anywhere she could find a booking…and now, looking back, it all seemed inevitable, leading to those highlights above.

 

And the shy girl isn’t a shy woman—well, most of the time.