This story is about 8yr old Jesse as she grows closer to her workaholic mother Maggie, grandma Jamba and friends through celebrating Kwanzaa.

On jesie’s first day of public school she makes friends with the bullies Nelly and Rasha. After school Maggie comes to pick her up. Jessie excitedly goes off about how her day went, but soon realizes her mother has ear buds in and isn’t listening. Her mother states she will drop her off home and go back to work. Jessie comes home to dinner with Jamba. The next few weeks continue in much the same manner, only Jessie stopped trying to talk on the ride home.

One evening Jamba states how she wants to celebrate Kwanzaa again like they used to when Jessie was a baby. Neither Jessie or Maggie seemed interested in the idea. The next day Jamba gives Jessie some invitation cards to hand out at school, but Jessie shoves them in her locker and goes to class. Suddenly a small wilde beast appears on Jessie’s desk in class and starts talking. In a state of panic and surprise she creates a commotion in class and gets scolded, then rushes to the washroom to talk to the animal. It tells how it's called Umoja, the first principle of Kwanzaa and that she must complete all 7 principles to unify her family and community. Jessie asks if this will make her mother pay her more attention and Umoja says yes, so she agrees to try it.

During lunch break Jessie offers Nelly and Rasha an invitation card, but they berate her and tell her it’s a pointless holiday, and that they’d rather celebrate Christmas. But Jessie doesn’t give up there, she tries to hand invitations to other kids, but her reputation as a bully over the past few weeks has made everyone either fear her or lose interest in getting involved. Downtrodden, Jessie goes home and that night Jamba comes to talk to her about what happened and tells Jessie that she should try treating people better and then invite them when the time's right.

After that Jessie stops Nelly and Rasha from bullying a boy at school, and he decides to be friends with her. End of episode 1.


I fell behind on the project and this is all I have. Feel free to let me know what you think of my idea for an episode 1 of this story.