‘I want to let as many children as I can meet know that learning is exciting.’

Mission Hills resident Judi Willkins, also known as the Fairy Godmother and Captain Morgana, Queen of the Reformed Pirates to hundreds of school children, bought the S&S; International Bookshop in April to give a home to her musical shows for children. Willkins presents as many as five shows a week at the shop, giving children and adults a chance to mend the gap between themselves and their heritage. She was interviewed by Times Staff Writer G. Jeanette Avent and photographed by Bruce K. Huff.

I have two children, two foster children and seven grandchildren, so I’ve been very involved in teaching children. When I was into ceramics, I would teach children ceramics in my home; when I was into weaving, I would teach them weaving. Anything I felt they wanted to learn, I would make the time to teach them, because I didn’t want them to lose the spark. I want to let as many children as I can meet know that learning is exciting.

I’ve also been involved with music for many years. The first instrument I played was an E Flat Alto saxophone with the Salvation Army Band. I was about 7. I thought it was so neat that they stood out on corners and played music to people, I asked if I could join. They gave me a horn and lessons, and I played with the band until I was about in the sixth grade.

About three years ago, I started a group, the Black Thorns Maritime Band, to work with young audiences. We do shows in school, shopping malls and private parties to teach children maritime history through stories and songs. I work with a classically trained guitarist, bassist and flute players to give the children a very fine musical experience, too.

We try to present it in a pretty exciting way, and we involve them from the beginning. When I am Captain Morgana, Queen of the Reformed Pirates, I dress in a huge, Renaissance-style dress with all kinds of jewels and a big cap with feathers in it.

I’m trying to present what I think is a wonderful tradition and one that is beneficial to children. Storytelling demands that children create their own images. I tell them we are going to take them on an imaginary trip back in time when pirates and thieves roved these great seas of ours. There’s a real theatrical work to bring them into the story. We pretend we are taking the Star of India, and we’re going to need a crew. Hands go up all over the audience.

In the maritime show, we talk about the different areas the sailors and pirates came from. When we’re rounding the coast of New England we talk about sailors from Wales, England and Ireland. When we travel into the Caribbean, South America and to China by way of Hawaii, we have different kinds of songs and stories.

The songs tell us a little bit about the world. They tell us what people were thinking. They tell us what life was like. There are very few good, written pictures of life on the big whaling ships. Those men didn’t keep big diaries. But in those songs, you can hear how rough their lives were. One of our tips to the children is how to be observant and listen to what a song says because they’ll learn something from it. At the end of the show, I encourage them to be a part of that creating spirit that tells the world a little about their view. If I can get one child excited about writing stories, I’ll tell stories till the cows come home.

When I do the fairy godmother I talk about European history, Celtic history and tradition. Storytelling is about tradition. It’s about an oral tradition that preserves history and explains the world in the best way people could before there were books and before there were as many explanations for the world as there are today. It’s about magic and about dreams coming true.

I’ve been doing the children’s shows full time for eight years. Senior citizens love them too. With the seniors, I encourage them to leave as a legacy not their money or their jewels or their china, but to leave the story of their lives. There is no more important legacy to leave your children than the story of when you were a child because that can never happen again. This comes out of a real concern for what has happened to our family structure. The family structure of the ‘40s and ‘50s has changed dramatically because of the economic demands that have been placed on the family. As we are evolving toward a new structure, what is happening is that the elders in the community who typically were the ones who had a lot of time to spend with the children, the ones who passed on the lessons of morals and ethics, are living in communities of their own, living away from their family. Those lessons aren’t being passed on to children, and the parents are too busy to do it.

I’m working with and promoting an intergenerational type of experience between children and the elders of our community. At the very least, when one of their grandchildren has a birthday, I encourage grandparents to write a story of the birthday that was the most important in their life. When the next new baby comes along in the family, write the story of when their daughter was born and what it felt like to hold her in their arms. Children need to feel this tie with their heritage, this tie with their family, this tie with their ancestry.

I’ve been getting some very fine feedback on that. Some people have actually written little books, and given them as gifts during Christmas to all the grandchildren, about their favorite Christmas. I think a lot of effort ought to be made to bring children and grandparents together.