Thank you, William and Cameron !"My world travels began when I was two, paused when I was twenty-four, and resumed twenty years later. In the early 2000s, I’d been in Nigeria all of two weeks when a group of Nigerian educators asked me how they could start a “reading culture” in their country. “In America,” one said, “you have a reading culture. If Nigeria is going to solve her problems, we need to have one too.”
I began to mull. What elements do have to be in place before a reading culture has a chance?
Books, I decided.
What else?
Not long after, I was interviewed on a Ugandan radio program, along with the president of the local International Reading Association branch and a local publisher. I was asked again. How does a country develop a reading culture?
I’m no literacy expert. I was in Nigeria and Uganda doing author visits, and, as the author of 27 children’s books, the only thing I’m an expert in (if that) is the writing of fiction. But I started with thinking how my five siblings and I became readers.
Our mom was key. We saw her passion for books and words, which matched our father’s love of telling and acting out stories. She taught us all to read—and gave us books every Christmas. Every birthday.
Since I grew up in Maji, Ethiopia, in a place with no bookstores…in fact, with no stores of any kind…I recently, I asked my mom where the books came from, each with its delicious promise of adventure to be licked up, savored, and swapped. She told me that shortly before leaving for Ethiopia, she read an article by a librarian, published in a women’s magazine: “One Hundred Best Books for Children.” So! A librarian was behind the literature that shaped my love of books.
Many a reader can say the same.
After more thinking, I decided books aren’t the sole necessary ingredient for a reading culture. Organizations have donated books to schools in places like Ethiopia, for instance, only to discover the books, a non-renewable resource, have been locked up. And how does reading spread from something that’s done by a few educated elite people to the homes and schools of scruffy families—like those my parents grew up in?
One clear answer is libraries. In the United States, libraries in homes and schools not only provide a chance for wide literacy, they are also buyers of children’s books and a big reason why the economics of book publishing sometimes work. The more I thought about all of this, the more I realized that everyone who was asking me, “How can we plant a reading culture?” probably needed to be asking, “How can we plant libraries?”
Andrew Carnegie, 19th century industrialist and Patron Saint of Libraries, was once a Scottish immigrant kid, working full-time by the age of twelve, educating himself through borrowed books. By the time he stopped working, his empire was worth about 400 million dollars. He believed that for democracy to be successful, those who inevitably ended up wealthy under its systems must give away their money—and in ways that allowed other hard-working and determined young people to become successful.
Voila. Fifty-five million dollars later, 2,509 places that didn’t used to have a library had one. Now, in the late 20th century, I was meeting citizens of various African countries who clearly shared some of Carnegie’s assumptions.
I was intrigued by all of these ideas, but they were still only academic questions until I was approached by a visionary man who had a dream of starting libraries for children in the African country where I grew up. Yohannes Gebregeorgis fled Ethiopia in the face of almost certain death, during the time of the Marxist government and landed as a political refugee in the United States. By the time he contacted me, he had a MLS degree. This man who had never held a book outside of school until he was nineteen years old was now a children’s librarian in San Francisco Public Library.
With Yohannes’s dreams and whatever money I could scrape together, we started Ethiopia Reads.
Yohannes moved back to Ethiopia in 2002. Since then, he has been working to open sustainable libraries, the first libraries for children in a capital city of about five million people and (for now) one rural area. He began by turning the house he’d rented for himself and his sons into a community library. When that library drew 40,000 visits in the first year, he experimented with tent libraries and then, using an idea he’d picked up in another African country, a donkey mobile library. Last year, he planted sixteen school libraries and has Rotary funding for thirteen more. In late 2008, his work was honored when he was selected by a committee (that included Jane Goodall and Desmond Tutu) as one of the CNN heroes of the year.
As Yohannes says, “Books change lives."
Many a book lover has discovered that it’s easier to start a library than to keep one going. So what will make these new libraries last? The first piece, I think, is already in place: we are responding to what communities identify as important, not attempting to talk people into what they should want. A second piece is in the design. The schools where Yohannes plants libraries, for example, provide a clean, well-lighted room and a person to run the library. Once we build furniture and ship and place books, the operating costs are carried by the school. Yohannes himself provides basic training, and eventually we’ll expand our literacy training for the Ethiopians running the new libraries.
With the decade winding down, I’ve decided that the answer for a reading culture is a) books, b) places where lots of people can read those books, and c) people who know how to introduce the power of reading to other people. Oh, and one more thing.
Money.
Carnegie wrote, “I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community.”
My First Books
by Ifeoma Onyefulu
When I was growing up in Nigeria, I didn't have that many books. We lived in small towns where there were no libraries or bookshops, and the few shops there were, sold mostly rulers, pencils and notebooks, so it was very difficult to buy books.
However, my parents sometimes bought my sibling and I books. Unfortunately, the books we had in those days were all about white children, who were either called John or Jill. There were always a boy and a girl in the book, with blond hair and blue eyes. They wore squeaky clean clothes, and shoes, as well. I was told lots of stories by my mother and other close relatives. They were such great stories; entertaining and full of good moral values for children.
The few books I had as a child were mostly about white children who were either called Jack or John, and in the case of a girl, Jane or Mary. They all had blond hairs and blue eyes, and were always squeaky clean.
For a while I thought all white children were like those two, until I came across Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield.
When I was a teenager, my reading list grew, thanks to my older brother who lent me his books. He read mainly crime novels. Since I had no choice, I read what he read. But he'd always make my wash my hands before I was allowed to touch any of his books.
I believe my experiences have made me appreciate books a lot more. Perhaps that is why I became an author. But the good news is, I tell those stories my mother told us to school children in England.
Today, I want to talk about another book by a fellow blogger and expatriate.
Before
Danielle Barkhouse is a Canadian with a no-non-sense, down-to-earth approach to life - now that I think about it, I realize that most Canadians I know seem to share that quality. She has a good, often very funny voice, spunky and full of personality, and most of all, I found her to be unwaveringly and refreshingly honest, and that is the thing that impresses me the most about her blog, and now, her book.
As an expat who’s lived outside of her birth country practically half her life -yuck, imagine being old enough to be able to say something like that! - I’m quite familiar with said stages of culture shock (they have been assimilated to the stages of grief), even though I only recently acquired the vocabulary and knowledge to recognize the symptoms for what they are. I’ve also witnessed other people experiencing them. I don’t believe it is ever easy to analyze one’s emotions with the clarity and honesty that Danie Barkhouse displays throughout her book. It is often more convenient to either shut out the world just outside the door and become totally negative about it, or to fall into the other extreme, which is to make the conscious decision that you will like it, whether you really do or not. Danie candidly admits to having fallen into the first negative category while living in
“The difference between me and most other people is that I say the stuff most people think but don’t say aloud,” she declares, at some stage. To illustrate that point, here is her undiluted take about the way political correctness is transforming Christmas in the
"The day that we left Chennai, JB walked through the factory and about 60 people wished him a Merry Christmas. Or, as they say, Happy Christmas. We’ve received cards and gifts from many non-Christmas-celebrating people. We're talking about Indian Hindus. As we journeyed through the
How is that for going straight to the point? It is entirely true that most people, in
Another post is aptly titled “Miss Communications,” and I could have written it myself.
“You can't stick a girl in
Well, they survived the way we all do when we have to - and of course, they couldn't pine after our ultra fast ways of doing things, nowadays, since these didn't exist. But for having experienced it, I can tell you that it's enough to drive any girl outside of the boundaries of sanity.
Now, one may argue that Danie’s experience is that of the corporate expatriate, and not all expats work for corporations which provide their staff and their family with cultural trainings, shipment entitlements every three or four months, etc, etc. So, when she touches the potentially sensitive subject of the differences between expats (“There seems to be a growing attitude among expats of whether you're 'expat enough.' Twelve years as an expat is 'less expat' than 25 years with the kids being born all around the world. You might also be 'more expat' than someone else if your posts have been tougher. A post in
First of all, there are those who don’t even know what “home” means, anymore. They may belong to a family with the father being from one place, the mother from another – or even two, as in my own case – with kids born in yet another place, or more, and so, where is home? For me, home is where my bubble, containing my daughters, my husband, and my books are. It’s not a country. I’m tremendously helped in that by the fact that my mother, who left Franco’s
Secondly, being an expatriate in a place where you find practically everything, where there are no power supply or communication problems to speak of is not the same as being in a place where you have to deal with this kind of problem practically on a daily basis; there may be power cuts, and the Internet may not work from time to time in India, especially when it rains, but as someone who spent over three years in Nigeria, where I routinely had to go entire weeks without phone or the Internet, I have found India to be quite all right in that regard. And I’m not even mentioning security problems, again like the ones we had in Nigeria, where the UNICEF office could be attacked by men holding Kalashnikovs, one of them beating an office driver so he would hand over the 4x4 car keys, and my husband, who was the primary target of one of the mentioned Kalashnikovs shouting at them to just take the bloody car and leave the driver alone (which they did, thank Goodness!), and yours truly only a few feet behind said husband. Now, this may be a rather dramatic example, but I’ve gathered so many others from other expats having lived in difficult places, not always that spectacular, yet harrowing enough to render life very difficult indeed. Of course, some might respond that UN people know what they're getting themselves into when they choose such career. Maybe. Their families don't always, though. And so, I would argue (gently) with Danie that in light of all that, well, perhaps it is easier to understand why some people may feel that they're "a little more expats" than others. I don't believe it is ever done in a spirit of spiteful competition, but rather coming from a place of experience where you can't help but compare situations and draw obvious conclusions. The reason I mention this is that I do, at times, get a bit annoyed at some expats when I hear them complaining endlessly about not finding a particular brand of cereals, or some such.
That said, I want to add that going through the stages of culture shock means that people may find their buttons pushed where, in any other circumstances - like back home where they don't have to adjust to so many new things and ways of doing them - they would have remained pretty much unruffled. Expats recently landed in a new place need to keep that reality in mind, and cut themselves some slack. It takes time - anywhere from a few months to a whole year. And this is where having a book like Danie's can prove invaluable, if only to provide reassurance that it is all normal.
In another insightful post, the author ponders the opinion that "living in
I totally recommend this book to any expatriate preparing to move to
First of all, tell us about Cesar. Who is he, what does he do, who’s the publisher and when is the book coming out?
Cesar is an iguana that lives in a second-grade classroom at
The book came out this month (March, 2008) and is published by Sterling Publishing.
How did Cesar’s story come to you?
Cesar Takes a Break is based on a true story. The iguana in my son’s fourth-grade class – also named Cesar -- escaped during spring break. He was when the kids returned to school. Everyone was so worried about him. Five days after Cesar disappeared, my son spotted him peeking out from a vent in the wall. After Cesar was back safe and sound, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. It looked to me as if Cesar decided to take a spring break just as the kids did. I decided to write Cesar’s story.
I wish I could say I had a good, fixed schedule for writing. Instead, I just look for opportunities – and hour here or there. When the kids are off hanging out with their friends and the computer is free, I sit down and write. When I first started writing, I would go out to a café or restaurant to write to help me focus. Sometimes, I go away for a writer’s weekend with my sister. We spend our days writing or doing our own thing, then get together for a hike in the afternoon. In the evening, we make dinner and talk for hours.
I am a newspaper copy editor, and my husband I have three kids. When we’re not working, it seems we’re always busy with kids and kids’ activities and just keeping the home ship afloat.
I have always loved books, loved reading, and always wanted to write my own stories. I never really thought about doing anything else when I was younger. By the time I decided to get serious about writing fiction, I was a mother and had developed a love of children’s books. I really wanted to write for children.
Also, back when I was in college, I was lucky to take a great course in children’s literature. We studied picture books, and I was fascinated by the way pictures and text came together to create a story. I didn’t think about writing for kids then, but I think that class planted a seed.
What is your first memory related to reading, writing, to books?
Great question! I can remember a time when I couldn’t read and really wanted to. My oldest sister, Cathy, tried to teach me showing the comics. I remember she showed me a letter A and circled it. Then she asked me to try to find another A in the comics. I couldn’t. Then, she pointed to one word and asked me to find an A. I still couldn’t. It all looked like a bunch of squiggly lines. I really wanted those lines to come together and make sense, but they didn’t
I don’t remember when it all came together. All I know is that in first grade, I was reading all the time and loving it.
What books had a strong impact on you as a child? Any favorite? Book or author?
I loved “The Cat in the Hat” when I was a little kid. When I got older, I read tons of Nancy Drew Mysteries. And I loved “Harriet the Spy.” It inspired me to keep a journal for the first time.
This is your first publication. Tell us how things happened for you? How was Cesar picked up?
I met my editor, Meredith Mundy Wasinger, at a Michigan SCBWI conference. I submitted Cesar Takes a Break for a critique. She was very enthusiastic about the story but had lots of questions. She wanted me to provide more sensory detail and to tighten the structure of the story. But she also said she would be happy to take a look at it again if I revised. That made my day, my week, my year! I revised it for her twice before the story finally was accepted.
I find that there are many articles about how to get published, but all in all, very little information about the process, once a story has been accepted for publication. Of course, it has to do with the fact that editors all have their ways of doing things. Still, some things are pretty much the same everywhere. What would like to say about the publishing process? How did it happen? What were the highlights for you?
It was very exciting to watch the story take shape on the page – to see the sketches, then the final art, then the proofs with the text and art together. I love Rogé’s art. He really captured Cesar’s personality and humor.
I was surprised by the attention to detail – in my text and in the illustrations – as the book came together.
She is terrific. She is an extremely thorough editor and has a great sense of humor. At times, I felt like I had a collaborator on the story. If you like the image of Cesar sunning himself under the French fry heat lamps, thank Meredith! 
Would you tell us how it worked? Were you consulted at all? How often?
I didn’t expect to be consulted at all on the art, so I was pleasantly surprised when I was. I was asked what kind of illustrations I imagined for the story and asked to comment on sketches. I happily volunteered my opinion, but I knew the final decision was up the editor and art director.
I am working on a Michigan Christmas picture book for
What advice would you give to a new aspiring writer?
Write the story you want to tell – the one no one else can tell for you. Work at your craft. And find kindred spirits who can help you improve your writing and offer support when you get discouraged.
Thank you, Sue. And the best of luck to Cesar.
