In our family we have all joined together and read picture books set in Mongolia, which is our current focus on PaperTigers. I had to hunt around a bit but we came up with a good selection. I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail here as they are all gathered up in my Personal View, Taking a step into children’s books about Mongolia. We have really enjoyed delving into the culture and heritage of Mongolia and these picture books have been read all together and individually.

One bedtime Older Brother read Horse Song: the Naadam of Mongolia by Ted and Betsy Lewin (Lee and Low, 2008) to Little Brother – quite a long read and they were both engrossed. Watching them from the outside, as it were, I came to an added appreciation of the dynamics of Ted and Betsy’s collaboration, both in the energy of their shared enthusiasm and participation in the events surrounding the famous horse-race, and also of being struck by a busy, crowded scene one page and then giggling at the turn of expression on an individual study’s face the next.

And I’ll just share with you Little Brother’s reaction to Suho’s White Horse, which you can read about in a bit more detail in my Books at Bedtime post earlier this week:

It was a moving story. The governor made me angry because he broke his word and was cruel to Suho and his horse.
[Listening to the musical version played on the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, the morin khuur] Once you know the story, you can tell which part of the music is telling which part of the story. How do they make that music with just two strings? It fills me with awe.

I also read The Horse Boy: A Father’s Miraculous Journey to Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson (Viking, 2009), an amazing story of a family’s journey to Mongolia in search of horses and shamans to seek healing for the torments that were gripping their five-year-old autistic son’s life: as Isaacson puts it with great dignity, his “emotional and physical incontinence”. If you have already read this humbling, inspiring book (and even if you haven’t), take a look at this recent interview three years on from their adventurous journey. Now I need to see the film!

And talking of films (which we don’t very often on PaperTigers, but I can’t resist mentioning this one), The Story of the Weeping Camel is a beautiful, gentle film that takes you right to the heart of Mongolian life on the steppe. Who would have thought a documentary film about a camel could be so like watching a fairy tale? Don’t be put off by the subtitles – our boys love this film. Take a look at the trailer -

But now it’s time to leave Mongolia and find out what everyone else has been reading…

Sandhya, who blogs eloquently at My Handful of the Sky has re-read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time since she was a teenager – and her post makes me think I should do the same.

Sandhya is also doing the Challenge with her daughter A. and together they have read two books. Firstly The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean, a formidable partnership: read Sandhya’s great post here. And secondly, from India and as their non-fiction book, Aajoba – My Grandfather by Taruja Parande (Tulika Books, 2010): read her beautiful review here, following on from her celebrating fifteen years of Tulika Books.

Myra at Gathering Books, who was raring to go with the Challenge is already nearly half way through reading the world (well on the PaperTigers Challenge anyway!) – she started off, during Black History Month, with Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou and illustrated by Jean-Michel Basquiat, as a poetry book from North America. Although I have read Maya Angelou’s autobiographies, I didn’t know about this book and wow – I have to get hold of it! The art-work, some of which you can see in Myra’s wonderful post is astonishing.

Book Number 2 is actually two books reviewed together in her post Of Vanishing Villages and Round and Square Houses: A 2-in-1 Ann Grifalconi Special – and again, I have to thank Myra for introducing me to two very special picture books, both written (and the second one illustrated) by Ann Grifalconi, which she says embrace “the magic of storytelling and weaving words together that makes one’s eyes close and one’s heart open”: The Village that Vanished illustrated by Kadir Nelson (set among the Yao people, east of Lake Malawi) and The Village of Round and Square Houses (set in the Cameroons).

And Book Number 3 is a gorgeous, wordless picture book by Chilean author/illustrator Fernando Krahn – The Self-Made Snowman – read Myra’s in-dpeth review here.

Zarah over at School Librarian in Action has read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows – read her insightful review here.

Amy at Delightful Children’s Books has posted lists of 10 Books About Children From Around the World and her children’s top 10 books about South America – if you’re looking for inspiration, you’ll definitely find it there, especially non-fiction; and she has also just posted a list of educational resources for reading around the world…

If you haven’t joined us yet, then please do – it’s so great to be joined by friends around the world. Remember there’s no time limit in this year’s Reading the World Challenge, apart from completing it by the end of the year – and that’s lots of books away yet! I’ve also tried to make it so that it could fit in with school programs – so how about getting your class involved if your in school? If any children would like to contribute their responses to books, we’d love to feature it too. For details, read this year’s introductory post…

Now on to the next book – Happy Reading!

It was the third night of Hannukkah and young Isaac Schnitzer was doing his homework when there was a loud crash in his bedroom: someone had thrown a rock through the window at the menorah that had been shining out into the darkness.

Isaac was stunned when he found out that rock had been thrown because he was Jewish, one incident in a spate of racist and anti-semitic attacks in the town. At this point, this crime could simply have become another statistic, with Isaac and his family picking up the pieces and carrying on. This did indeed happen: Isaac’s parents talked to him about not allowing bullies to stop them celebrating their holiday and that is what they resolved to do. However, this event was also the catalyst for a community-wide reaction to the intolerance. A town meeting was held and a woman called Margaret MacDonald, inspired by the King of Denmark and others wearing the yellow star of David during the second world war so that the Nazis would not be able to distinguish who was Jewish quite so easily, suggested that everyone put a menorah in their window.

At school, Isaac explained the meaning of Hannukah and the menorah to his classmates. The story follows one of them, Theresa, home and narrates the discussions she had with her family, and the huge picture of the menorah they put in their window with a greeting to Isaac and his family, along with a Jewish star and a Christian cross. Indeed, more and more menorahs appeared in windows as the days went by; and in the town of Billings, the acts of hatred gradually came to stop.

This is a great book for raising issues with children not just of tolerance but of what can be achieved when people stand together against bullies and bigots. It takes time and it takes courage but as the people of Billings said, ridding their town of these acts of hatred “was a gift they had given themselves. And [...] it was their best holiday gift, ever.” The events in Billings have inspired many people over the years – and author Janice Cohn has also written a play based on the story, Paper Candles; as well as this article. For further exploration of kidlit resources promoting respect for religious diversity, head on over to our current issue of PaperTigers, where you will also find these reading lists and links to other articles.

My reaction is curious as well as delighted, and comments from other viewers convey the same yearning to know what are the titles of some of the books in these pictures. And beyond that question is which of these titles are most requested as bedtime stories or daytime readalouds?

Which of these books does the owner spend time poring over, perhaps knowing them by heart? If they are owned by someone who can read the words, which of them is most read aloud to her parents or his younger siblings–or to a pet dog or cat for that matter!

Please tell us which books are most popular in your household? Which one can you recite from menory as you read it aloud to your child? And, while you’re at it, if you haven’t sent us a picture of your child’s library, we are eager to see it–and so are other parents around the world.

Let’s find out if a child in Bangalore loves the same book as a child in Brooklyn–and what books a mother in the Philippines most enjoys reading aloud to her children. The world is full of wonderful books and the children who love them–which are your child’s favorites?

Although my mother taught her children to love books with a fierce and covetous passion, it was a rare occasion when she read to us. She was a woman who had five children in nine years, who lived in Alaska with no electricity or running water, who baked everything we ate from scratch and was either cooking  or washing our clothes or doing her best to keep us in a presentable state. She had time for little else.

My father read to us in the winter when the nights were long–Heidi,  The Rose and the Ring, Treasure Island,  –my earliest memories are of these books that enthralled me long before I went to school. Then he went blind.

By the time my father was no longer able to read aloud, I was hopelessly ensnared in the tradition. The minute I finished a book that I loved, I would promptly begin reading it aloud to my younger sisters and brother, my captive audience. They were, however, a strongminded group and would certainly have rebelled if necessary, but instead they would frequently ask me to read to them, even after they could read to themselves.

While certainly it is a wonderful thing for parents to read to children, it is also a special act when children read to each other. Marjorie mentions that in a recent comment when she talks about the”special harmony that is engendered” when her oldest son reads aloud to his little brother. Aline tells of a class that she visited and read to where “ a young boy, who normally has trouble focusing, asked me if he could read to the class, instead, and wow!… did he capture their attention! Then they were all lining up to see who would do it next!” And one of my happiest maternal moments was when my oldest son took over our annual Christmas  Eve tradition of reading  aloud A Child’s Christmas in Wales. 

If parents don’t have time to read aloud, children do. All that’s needed is that they be infected with the joy of reading–then watch out! They will indeed pass that virus on, by reading aloud to everyone who will listen.

My father had a team of huskies when I was small. They were working dogs, trained to pull freight on a sled, and it was conventional wisdom that to make pets of these animals would spoil them as sled dogs. As a child who saw little distinction between animals and people, I was initially delighted to have eight new dogs in the family and then horrified that I couldn’t make friends with them.

It was a safety issue as well as a pragmatic one. Children in rural Alaska were frequently savaged when they came too close to  chained huskies,  and I was forbidden to go anywhere near the doghouses that our dog team was chained to. My father would give them food and water twice a day, but during the summer, when there was no snow for sledding, the dogs ate, slept, and watched our household from the shelter of their own cramped little houses.

Their summer lives were boring beyond extreme, I decided, and so I would go, book in hand, sit on an empty doghouse that was a safe distance away, and I would read to them. I was careful to choose books that would interest them, like  Call of the Wild or White Fang, and thye would come out of their houses and sit, watching me, heads cocked to one side, clearly interested. Sometimes they would make little noises when I finished our storytime, that would persuade me to stay for another chapter.

I thought of that when I found out about R.E.A.D., an organization that pairs children with therapy dogs, providing the children with an audience that is receptive and nonjudgemental, while improving their own reading skills and confidence. This is an especially effective way of working with children who are emotionally disturbed, since friendly dogs exert a calming and nurturing influence that may not be found in the child’s daily life.

This is a splendid program,  and one that could well be expanded. Why not children reading aloud to  children? All over the world? Let’s give this a little thought and talk about it again next week…