The PaperTigers’ website current (and ongoing!) focus is “literacy,”and to help unpack some of the site’s riches I call attention to a very special book we have reviewed earlier this year, Armando and the Blue Tarp School (Lee & Low, 2007). Written by Edith Hope Fine and Judith Pinkerton and illustrated by Hernan Sosa, this inspiring story, which has won a 2008 Skipping Stones Honor Award, is based on a teacher’s humanitarian work in the Tijuana garbage dump community. It’s the story of a young boy who is finally able to take some time off his work, picking trash with his father, to attend Señor David’s school.

“I thought schools had walls, floors, and roofs. But Señor David said a school could be anywhere — even on a tarp, in a colonia.”

Literacy and education are basic human rights and, as this book shows well, integral to the betterment of one’s life and of humankind.

Posted by: Aline | This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Reading the World, World Literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Tags: Armando and the Blue Tarp, Children's Books, David Lynch, Edith Hope Fine, education, Judith Pinkerton, literacy