Together, we have read two new autobiographical picture books: Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory (Scholastic, 2011) and Ed Young’s The House Baba Built (Little, Brown and Company, 2011) – both wonderful, and I’m not going to say much more about them here as we will be featuring both of them more fully on PaperTigers soon. Those are our reading-together non-fiction books for the Challenge.

As our local book, we tried reading a book of folk tales from the North York Moors, where we live in the UK, but discovered the stories formed part of a tourist guide, including instructions for getting around… we extracted what we could but it wasn’t a very satisfactory read. It has made us not take beautifully illustrated and retold folk tales for granted!

Older Brother has read Rainbow World: Poems from Many Cultures edited by Bashabi Fraser and Debjani Chatterjee , and illustrated by Kelly Waldek (Hodder Children’s Books, 2003).  He dipped in and out of it through the summer break and we had to renew it from the library several times…

Older Brother has also been totally captivated by A Thousand Cranes: Origami Projects for Peace and Happiness. After reading the story of Sadako for the Reading Challenge way back in its first year, he’s wanted to know how to make the cranes but I have two left hands when it comes to origami – or at least I thought I did, until I received a review copy of A Thousand Cranes from Stone Bridge Press.  Recently revised and expanded from the original book by renowned origami expert Florence Temko, it’s a super little book, with good clear instructions for beginners like us, and giving background about both the offering of a thousand origami cranes as a symbol of longevity, and specifically the story of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.  Older Brother, now that he is older, enjoyed reading this factual account here, and learning more about the Peace Park in Hiroshima.  He is now determined to make a string of 1,000 cranes himself and send them to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial: full details of how to do this are included in the book.  There are also lots of ideas for other craft projects, though I’m not sure any of us is quite up to making anything like the amazing example shown of pictures made with 1,001 cranes as wedding gifts.  But with such clear instructions, the only difficulty now is choosing which of the 48 pieces of beautiful Japanese chiyogami paper included to make the next crane with…  And we’re thinking of taking up the book’s suggestion of encouraging our local community to create a string of 1,000 cranes together.

Over the last few months, Little Brother has probably read more than all of us put together, but for the purposes of the Reading Challenge, he has read the Spirit of PaperTigers book set as one item on his Challenge list.  He loved Biblioburro, and then finding out more about the library via internet videos etc;  A Child’s Garden has touched him profoundly; and he has read and reread as many of James Rumford’s books as he can lay his hands on, thanks to Rain School.

He has also read Manolito Four-Eyes by Elvira Lindo, illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga and translated by Joanne Moriarty (Marshall Cavendish, 2008).  Here’s what he say about it:

Manolito Four-Eyes is ten years old and he lives in Carabanchel, Madrid, Spain. He says that he wouldn’t manage to write about the first ten years of his life in the next ninety! He’s always falling out with his best friend Big Ears López. Manolito says he can sometimes be a dog or a traitor and sometimes a dog-traitor. He eventually makes friend with Ozzy the school bully.

My favorite bit was in the chapter called “A Pretty Original Sin”, when Manolito and his grandfather meet a mugger who turns out to be from Grandpa’s village.

Manolito Four-Eyes is extrememly funny and if you like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you’ll enjoy this too.

I, meanwhile, have read what I realise is my third non-fiction book  set in the Second World War: The Zoo-Keeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, based on the journals kept by the wife of the head of Warsaw zoo before and during the war.  It’s beautifully written and a very powerful read – shocking and terrifying, and intensely moving.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I’ve also included Uma Krishnaswami’s glorious The Grand Plan to Fix Everything as one of my books – I loved it, and if you missed my interview with Uma as part of her blog tour when the book came out in May, you can read it here.

Uma has herself signed up for The Reading the World Challenge – you can read  her book list here on her own blog, Writing with a Broken Tusk, and why she chose some of them here, in a great Guest Post Uma wrote over at The Brain Lair about being a book traveller or a book tourist …

And Sandhya over at My Handful of the Sky has posted about the books she has read with her daughter: Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine as their non-fiction book, and Oranges in No Man’s Land by Elizabeth Laird, set in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war.  Sandhya has scooped the non-fiction, poetry and local categories of the challenge into one book for her own read, A Poem for CRY - CRY being the non-profit Child Rights and You.

If you are taking part in the Challenge (and there is still probably just about time to squeeze it in before the end of the year, if you haven’t started yet!), do tell us what books you’ve read and leave a link to any posts you write about them.

I am drawn to true-life stories, and true stories that relate to world events. Stories about brave and courageous individuals are personally so inspiring to me, and I want children to know about these people. I feel that children have the capacity to understand the big issues of our lives, if in a simplified way.

Her books certainly succeed in drawing out the essence of the people and situations she profiles, in a way that makes them memorable and inspiring for children. For example, I love her book (included in our Gallery) Mama: A True Story, in Which a Baby Hippo Loses His Mama During a Tsunami, But Finds a New Home, and a New Mama (Harcourt Children’s Books, 2007) because really the story is told in the title. With only a few speech bubbles calling “Mama!” among the visually stimulating illustrations, the turmoil and ultimate reassurance are conveyed without over-frightening small readers.

A vibrant illustration from Biblioburro fronts Jeanette’s Gallery. It tells the true story of Colombian teacher and literacy advocate Luis Soriano, who founded his donkey library to take books out to remote villages and ensure that children have access to help with their schoolwork. Read this post from True Tales and a Cherry on the Top for a beautiful anecdote that exemplifies why he got started; and watch this video:

Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 following her return to her native Kenya, after pursuing university studies in the US: she was concerned not only about the detrimental changes in the landscape caused by deforestation, but also about how these were affecting women’s lives especially. Through the Green Belt Movement, more than 47 million trees have been planted, and with them, many families have been able to take active control of their own food production and become involved in promoting sustainable development.

Three inspirational children’s books that relate this aspect of Wangari Maathai’s life are Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) and Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt Books, 2008) and Seeds of Change: Wangari’s Gift to the World by Jen Cullerton Johnson, illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler (Lee & Low Books, 2010). Wangari’s story helps children to recognise that small actions can lead to big actions, and that through putting many people’s small actions together, they can be the instrument for momentous change.

You can read more about Wangari Maathai’s incredible life on the Green Belt Movement’s website, including her advocacy for freedom and peace; and her own words about some of the issues close to her heart. Our thoughts and prayers are with Wangari’s family: may the knowledge that Wangari’s name and influence will live on be of consolation to them in their time of grief. An online condolence book is available on Wangari’s Facebook page.

It tells the story of the poet’s life through her sister, and begins with, “My sister Emily was buried today.” We are shown Emily’s room, and get a glimpse of her reclusive lifestyle – and then, in the course of the up to now rather sad narration, make the wonderful discovery alongside the sister, of the drawers full of poetry that nobody knew about while Emily was alive. Beginning with “This is my letter to the world”, it is a delightful way for young readers to be introduced to her poetry ,both for the poems themselves and their context.

The final two thirds of the book are given over to extracts from Dickinson’s poetry, ending with her sister’s avowal that “the world will read your letter – your poems.”  And the whole book is a treat for anyone who loves Jeanette Winter’s illustrations. The poet’s voice is emphasised, with Emily Dickinson in her trademark white dress depicted in some way on almost every page.

Here’s the whole of one of those special poems:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day – head on over…

On Traveling Libraries and Heroic ‘Book People’: Inspiring children’s books about getting books to people in remote places and difficult circumstances

My sons and I paid our first-ever visit to a bookmobile over the summer.  For us it was a novelty.  We have shelves of books at home and live just 3 blocks from our local branch library, but the brightly colored bus had pulled up right near the playground we were visiting in another San Francisco neighborhood (whose branch library was under renovation), and it was simply too irresistible.  Inside, this library on wheels was cozy, comfortable, and loaded with more books than I would have thought possible.  I urged my boys to practice restraint and choose only one book each rather than compete to reach the limit of how many books one can take out of the San Francisco Public Library system (the answer is 50; we’ve done it at least once).

The bookmobiles provide a great service even in our densely populated city where branch libraries abound.  There are other mobile libraries, however, that take books to children who may live miles from even the nearest modern road; to children who live on remote islands, in the sparsely populated and frigid north, in temporary settlements in vast deserts, and in refugee camps.  The heroic individuals who manage these libraries on boats, burros, vans, and camels provide children and the others they serve with a window on the world and a path into their own imaginations that would otherwise be impossible.

Shortly after my own bookmobile experience, Jeanette Winter‘s Biblioburro (Beach Lane Books, 2010), a tribute to Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano, who delivers books to remote hillside villages across rural Colombia, arrived in my mailbox to be reviewed for Paper Tigers.  I loved this book, as I do most of Winter’s work, for its bright pictures and simple, straightforward storytelling. Another picture book, Waiting for the Bibiloburro by Monica Brown (Tricycle Press, 2011), tells the story of Soriano’s famous project from the perspective of one of the children it serves, whose life expands beyond farm chores and housework thanks to Soriano and his burros.

I was moved, of course, by Soriano’s story, which got me thinking about another favorite picture book my children found at our branch library a few years ago: That Book Woman by Heather Henson (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008) is a fictionalized account of one family’s experience with the Pack Horse Library Project, a little-known United States Works Progress Administration program that ran from 1935-1943.  The Pack Horse librarians delivered books regularly to families living deep in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains.  In this inspiring story a young boy’s disdain for reading is transformed through his awe in watching “that Book Woman” make her way to his family’s remote cabin without fail every two weeks no matter the weather.  ”I stand a spell to watch that Book Woman disappear. […] It’s not the horse alone that’s brave, I reckon, but the rider too.  And all at once I yearn to know what makes that Book Woman risk catching cold or worse.” When winter keeps the family housebound, the boy asks his sister to teach him how to read.  He emerges, in spring, with a thirst for books as strong as hers.

Margriet Ruurs’ My Librarian is a Camel (Boyds Mill Press, 2005) profiles alternative libraries in 13 different countries.  Camels, which can carry up to 400 pounds, are the beast of choice for delivering books to nomadic villages in Kenya, where desert sands prevent even the toughest four-wheel drive vehicles from getting in.  Donkeys in Peru and Zimbabwe pull library carts to rural villagers, while in Mongolia, where horses were first domesticated (and the literacy rate is nearly 100%), books are delivered across the Gobi desert by either a horse-drawn wagon, a camel, or, sometimes, a minibus, as discussed by well-known Mongolian children’s writer and Mobile Library founder Jambyn Dashdondog in this article.  Donkeys are also a critical part of the library system of rural Ethiopia, where larger mobile libraries are pulled by donkey teams through the relatively flat landscape thanks to the Ethiopia Reads project (you can read about it on PaperTigers here).  Books are delivered by boat to some remote communities in Indonesia and Finland, while in Nunavut, homeland of the Inuit in the far northern reaches of Canada, library books come in the mail, along with postage paid envelopes so they can be returned.  Many other countries, including Pakistan and Australia, have mobile library systems in trucks or buses that greatly expand the reach of their brick-and-mortar libraries.

Some of the libraries profiled in My Librarian is a Camel  have been transformed or no longer exist.  In Blackpool, England, a community of locals once delivered books via wheelbarrow to vacationers on the beach.   Today, the library system of the City of Port Philip in Victoria, Australia has begun cycling out its old stock by offering a beach wheelbarrow library service.   The Port Philip librarians do not expect the books to be returned but ask only that patrons pass them on to others when they have finished with them.   The “blue truck” of Azerbaijan was especially noteworthy for its role in delivering books each week to children living in refugee settlements.  The program was discontinued upon the establishment of 31 stationary libraries for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in central Azerbaijan.  Elsewhere, I learned about Thailand’s Elephant Delivery Project and The Library Train in Bangkok: a neat role reversal for the mobile library in which the Railway Police have converted a train carriage into a static Train Library for local street kids!

The research for this article brought to mind many of the heroic librarians I have read about in other children’s books, such as Alia Muhammad Baker, The Librarian of Basra (Harcourt, 2005) who saved some 30,000 books from the fires of war in 2003; Pura Belpré of The Storyteller’s Candle (Children’s Book Press, 2008), who stayed put in her library while making sure that new immigrants in New York understood that it was there for them as it was for everyone in the city; and of course, the remarkable Jella Lepman, founder of The International Youth Library and IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, whose story is told in Books for Children of the World: The Jella Lepman Story (Pelican Publishing, 2007). Lepman helped people everywhere understand that sometimes children need books as much as they need food and water.  She helped encourage peace by distributing translated copies of Munro Leaf’s classic, The Story of Ferdinand to the children of war-torn Germany following World War II.  The books helped the children transcend their difficult existence and gave people everywhere an opportunity to participate in peacemaking by contributing to Lepman’s effort.

The heroes of today’s mobile libraries and the children who look forward to their arrival would make Lepman proud.  I wonder how many lives are better today because a poor child of Appalachia or a German war orphan discovered books 50 or 60 years ago at the hands of an intrepid librarian.  Their descendants will reap the benefits of reading for generations to come, and the children served by unconventional libraries all over the world are, even now, contributing to a brighter future for all of us, one page at a time.

PaperTigers Personal View by Abigail Sawyer, September 2011

Jeanette Winter,
Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia
Beach Lane Books, 2010.

Ages 4-8

We have all met children with a never-ending hunger for books.  Some of them have shelves full of them, but it seems there can never be too many: the prospect of a new story always whets their appetite for more.

There are other children whose hunger for books goes much deeper.  These are the children who may read a single book over and over because it is the only book they have, children who dream about that book when they are not reading it and wish they had others.  Deep in the jungles of Colombia, some of these children’s dreams have come true thanks to the ingenuity and determination of Luis Soriano, a schoolteacher and avid reader who has devised a way to bring books to these isolated communities: The Biblioburro, a mobile lending library carried on the backs of two donkeys.

Each week Luis loads up books from his private collection and carries them from his remote village of La Gloria to even more remote villages in the Colombian jungle.  Luis and his burros, Alfa and Beto, endure heat, tiredness, and even bandits as they carry their precious cargo to people hungry for books.  When Luis arrives, he reads to the children before allowing each of them to select a new book and return their books from the previous week.  Then Luis returns home and reads his own book late into the night.

With characteristic simplicity and her signature bold, bright colors, Jeanette Winter tells the beautiful story of this man who has enriched the lives of hundreds through his efforts.  Children with an insatiable appetite for reading despite full shelves and access to local libraries will appreciate the tale of the Biblioburro that brings books to children who would not have them otherwise. The fact that Luis himself lives a simple life and is willing to endure inconvenience and even danger to bring books where there are none underscores the value and power of reading to those of us who have come to take it for granted.  Biblioburro is a heartwarming profile of one man who is making the world better in a simple yet profound way.

Abigail Sawyer
September 2011

They are:

A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope by Michael Foreman (Walker Books / Candlewick Press, 2009)

Rain School by James Rumford (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010)

Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia by Jeanette Winter (Beach Lane Books, 2010)

All three are stunning picture books that were chosen for their engaging narrative and fine illustrations. By coincidence, all three are author-illustrated, something that only became evident after our choice had been made. We hope that the children participating in the Spirit of PaperTigers project will love the books as much as we do. They all encourage children to engage with big issues such as education and peace. They can, we believe, be enjoyed by a wide age range of children – an important consideration for the Spirit of PaperTigers project, as the books will also be read by older children who are learning English.

Following feedback from last year’s participant schools and libraries in the Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach project, we will be sending five copies of each of the three books that make up this year’s Book Set to each of the project’s participants. This will enable teachers to use the books more flexibly and allow for class input, as well as individual enjoyment.

To find out more about the Spirit of PaperTigers project, headover to our Outreach site, where you will find information about the Book Set gathered on one page. You will also be able to view feedback about the 2010 Book Set – and the site continues to be updated as new feedback come in.

The PaperTigers website will be featuring the SPT Book Set over the next few weeks: look out for Gallery Features of all three illustrators’ work, Q&As with the books’ editors, and more…

In the meantime, read reviews of:
A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope
Rain School
Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia

and enjoy these interviews with their creators:

Michael Foreman
James Rumford
Jeanette Winter

A big thank you to them and to their publishers. I’m sure you’ll agree that these are all exceptional books. We can’t wait to get them into the hands of readers around the world – we’ll keep you posted as to that, and look forward to featuring their feedback too.

April 28, 2010- Winners of the 2010 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards were announced today by the Jane Addams Peace Association.

Nasreen’s Secret School:  A True Story from Afghanistan, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is the winner in the Books for Younger Children Category.

Marching for Freedom:  Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge, Viking Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.

In Nasreen’s Secret School:  A True Story from Afghanistan Nasreen’s parents are gone, her father taken one night by soldiers, her mother lost on her search to find him.  Now living with only her grandmother, Nasreen stays inside herself, silent with trauma.  Whispers about a forbidden school reach her grandmother who, with stealth, bravery and hope, brings Nasreen to the secret school hidden in the home of an equally-brave woman, a teacher of girls. Framed stylized paintings in hues that symbolically reflect the path of Nasreen’s healing extend the story told in the plain, heartfelt voice of her grandmother. The power of education and resistance stand out in this all-too-true contemporary tale of the human toll exacted by war and the oppression of women.

Marching for Freedom:  Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary is a breathtaking tribute to the courageous, passionate African-American children who demanded voting rights through nonviolent action in the historic 1963 March from Selma to Montgomery. Riveting chronology, stunning photographs, and telling details from oral history interviews recreate the children’s anger, terror, solidarity and purpose moment-by-moment. This palpable sense of immediacy crystallizes the commitment of young people who acted on behalf of human rights when they were most frightened and “the end” was unclear and out of sight. Vital and forceful, this testament to the power of youth and collective nonviolent action inspires activism by delving deeply into the heart of a pivotal moment in the history of youth and civil rights in the United States.

Two books were named Honor Books in the Books for Younger Children Category:

Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney, published by Disney-Jump at the Sun Books, has been named an Honor Book for Younger Children.  Born a slave in upstate New York, Sojourner Truth, an iconic figure in the abolitionist and woman’s suffrage movements, was “Meant for speaking.  Meant for preaching.  Meant for teaching about freedom.”  Told with punch and vigor, this energetic picture book biography marches along with Truth as she frees herself from bondage and ultimately delivers her legendary women’s rights speech to a church filled with white men in 1851. Short storyteller-style sentences punctuated with exclamation points and meaningful capitalizations evoke Truth’s spirit and force. Illustrations in a palette of yellows alive with whirling lines keep the momentum, energy, sorrow, seriousness and fervor of Sojourner Truth’s unwavering quest for social justice front and center in an original rendering of this remarkable woman’s life.

You and Me and Home Sweet Home by George Ella Lyon and Stephanie Anderson, an Honor Book for Younger Children, is a Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Sharonda and her mother have been living in the back room of Aunt Janey’s apartment for more than a year now. When the pair’s church family declare that they are going to build them a house of their own, Sharonda responds:  “Right . . . Like I’m going to tap dance on the moon.”  Nurtured by Diane, the wise head of house construction, Sharonda benefits from shared work and a sense of community. Poetic text written in Sharonda’s voice captures the girl’s shifting emotions during the house-building process. Illustrations from many perspectives reinforce Sharonda’s growth in a blend of soft, primary and secondary colors held together by the brown tones depicting the African-American protagonist, her mother, the church family and the larger community.

Two books were named Honor Books in the books for Older Children Category:

Almost Astronauts:  13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone, is published by Candlewick Press. Fifty years ago, in the midst of the race into space, thirteen women pilots performed consistently better than men on the battery of psychological and physical tests required to become astronauts—and did not become astronauts. The spirit, resilience and determination of this group of women, now called the Mercury 13, infuse this gripping, well-researched chronicle of overt and institutionalized sexism. Framed by the launch of the space shuttle Columbia in 1999, the first space shuttle commanded by a woman, this heartbreaking story of untapped talent and lost dreams emphasizes that no effort on behalf of human rights is lost; indeed, each movement toward equality helps the next one along.

Claudette Colvin, by Phillip Hoose, published by Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar Straus Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group is a biography of Claudette Colvin, a teen-ager whose energy, drive, intelligence and thirst for justice pushed her to put herself on the line not once, but twice, in the battle for African-American civil rights.  On her own, Colvin challenged Montgomery, Alabama, bus segregation laws through civil disobedience months prior to the challenge that tripped the massive 1955 boycott.  And, with characteristic determination, she challenged them again through the courts as a plaintiff in the Federal class action suit that ruled bus segregation laws unconstitutional.  Intricate history of the period based in impeccable research blends smoothly with Colvin’s own words and adult reflections on her life and actions. This substantive photobiography explores both the effects of Colvin’s activism on civil rights and the effects of the civil rights movement on her life.

Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award annually acknowledges books published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books commended by the Award address themes or topics that engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books also must meet standards of literary and artistic excellence.

A national committee chooses winners and honor books for older and younger children.  Members of the 2010 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards Committee are: Susan C. Griffith, Chair (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan), Barbara Bair (Washington, D. C.), Marianne Baker (Barboursville, Virginia), Ann Carpenter (Harwich, Massachusetts), Julie Olsen Edwards (Soquel, California) Oralia Garza de Cortes (Austin, Texas), Daisy Gutierrez (Houston, Texas), Margaret Jensen (Madison, Wisconsin), Lauren Mayer (Seattle, Washington), Tessa Michaelson (Pagosa Springs, Colorado), Sarah Park (St. Paul, Minnesota), Pat Wiser (Sewanee, Tennessee) and Junko Yokota (Skokie, Illinois). Regional reading and discussion groups participated with many of the committee members throughout the jury’s evaluation and selection process.

The 2010 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards will be presented Friday, October 15^th in New York City, an event supported by The Hasting’s Peace and Justice Fund of New York City in honor of Peg Dunham. Details about the Award event and about securing winner and honor book seals are available from the Jane Addams Peace Association (JAPA). Contact JAPA Executive Director Linda B. Belle, 777 United Nations Plaza, 6^th Floor, New York, NY 10017-3521; by phone 212-682-8830; or by e-mail.

For additional information about the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and a complete list of books honored since 1953, see here.

Founded in 1948, JAPA is the educational arm of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).  In addition to sponsoring the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and other educational projects, JAPA houses the United Nations office of WILPF in New York City. Organized on April 28^th in 1915, WILPF is celebrating its 95^th year. For more information, visit WILPF’s U.S. Section or WILPF International.

In the meantime, here’s what we’ve read for our books #2:

Together we read Tales Told in Tents: Stories from Central Asia by Sally Pomme Clayton and illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer (Frances Lincoln, 2006). We loved it! Sally Pomme Clayton is a performance storyteller as well as a writer. Her storyteller voice makes these tales a joy to read aloud and she unobtrusively inserts cultural details, which deepen understanding, as well as some of her own experiences while gathering the stories on her travels through Central Asia, most notably in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. We learned the legend of how felt was invented; added to our growing collection of beautiful creation stories; marvelled at magic; revelled in riddles; and sought out the mythical storyteller whose presence wove itself through the different stories. Herxheimer’s beautiful illustrations help to convey the magic and even after we had listened to the story we had to go over each one again with attention fixed on the pictures.

Older Brother, 10 1/2, read Ice Trap! Shackleton’s Incredible Expedition by Meredith Hooper, illustrated by M. P. Robertson (Frances Lincoln, 2000) (and I think it’s published in the US as The Endurance: Shackleton’s Perilous Expedition in Antartica by Abbeville Kids, 2001). Here’s what he says about it:

I enjoyed this book a lot because of the excitement. In 1914 Shackleton set sail to Antarctica as he wanted to be the first person to walk all the way across the Antarctic Peninsula but his ship was caught in pack ice. Then their ship was crushed by the ice. They sailed in lifeboats to Elephant Island, which was uninhabited, then Shackleton took five men in a lifeboat. They wanted to sail to South Georgia but in sight of the cliffs they got caught in a hurricane, which blew them to the wrong side of the island, so they had to climb over mountains to reach the town. Then eventually everyone was rescued by a steam boat.

It was very exciting because a lot of unexpected things happened and also it’s true, which makes it even more exciting because it’s about Man against Earth and people belong to Earth. And Earth/Nature is stronger than Man and actually, they couldn’t control the ice.

I think they were brave. It was nearly the first time anyone had tried to get there. And there was a stowaway on board, which made it harder for them to survive because there wasn’t enough food. Not a single person died in two years. I’ve read this book three times – once my Grandad read it to us. That was special because he spent a year in Antarctica a long time ago.

Little Brother, 8, read Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter (new edition, Knopf Books, 2008):

Peg Leg Joe is a sailor with a missing leg and he sings a song which will help lead slaves to freedom. It’s called “Follow the Drinking Gourd” – the Drinking Gourd is a constellation which we call the Plough and in America it’s called the Big Dipper and it’s part of the Great Bear. It points to the Pole Star so it always points North. There’s a slave who is about to be sold the next day away from his wife and children who are in slavery as well. That night they all follow the Drinking Gourd. It’s not an easy journey and in the pictures there are some Wanted! posters of them. Then they meet Peg Leg Joe at a river in a boat. He rows them across the river in his boat and then he goes back to collect some more slaves who have also followed the Drinking Gourd, leaving the family at a trail he calls the Underground Railway. It’s a trail of houses with safe places to hide. They hide and rest in the day and move at night so they can follow the constellation and also so they can’t be found so easily. They make it to safety and freedom.

This really happened. I knew that there were people who used to be slaves but I never knew they tore families apart. I’m glad that some people escaped to freedom but slavery is wrong and everyone should have the right to be free.

As its name suggests, the bookshop is situated in Willesden, in North West London, which is one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in London with upward of 30 languages spoken in its schools. Steve talked about rising to the challenge of finding books that reflect this diversity of culture in modern Britain. As far as publishing goes in the UK, “There’s a great time lag between recognising that diversity and publishers coming out with appropriate books” – with some notable exceptions, namely Frances Lincoln, Tamarind Books and some books from a few of the big publishers like Penguin. There’s an increase in books reflecting contemporary African heritage but it is still difficult to find Asian children in a normal British setting. There are some lovely books like My Mother’s Sari but they do not often step outside the stereotypical view. However, looking out into the wider world, books are starting to appear which show modern Indian cities – and the same with Africa: not just a focus on rural life in these countries but also books showing the modern urban areas.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

The children’s section of the bookshop welcomes young readers under a jungle canopy, with a mouth-watering selection of books, nearly all within reach of young people. On one side there is a display area devoted to Celebrating Black History and at the back are to be found a carousel of books featuring different faith celebrations and floor-to-ceiling shelves of books for the website. They also stock a wide range of dual-language books, with an increasing emphasis on Eastern European languages and culture, and this is reflected too in one of the most recent sections to be added to the website: Poland and Eastern Europe.

The website, which currently trades solely within the UK, caters not only for schools and teachers, but also for a mixture of individual parents across the country who are looking for a wider variety of books than they can find easily more locally. Half of The Willesden Bookshop’s trade is through schools – and indeed, in these challenging times for local, independent bookstores, Steve candidly admits they would not be able to survive without that trade. They have a good relationship with local schools and their teachers – and will do research for them if they’re needing something for a particular topic. At the moment they are looking to introduce a multicultural maths section to their website.

So what caught our eye? Plenty! Here I am holding A Ride on Mother’s Back: A Day of Baby-Carrying Around the World by Emery Bernhard and We Are All Born Free… and here, in no particular order, are what we came away with ( and lots of them will be reappearing as we report back on our PaperTigers Reading Challenge…):

Ice Trap! Shackleton’s Incredible Expedition by Meredith Hooper, illustrated by M.P. Robertson (Frances Lincoln, 2000);
Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter (Dragonfly Books, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992);
The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud, illustrated by Erin Susanne Bennett (Candlewick Press, 2007);
Hairy Maclary’s Hat Tricks by Lynley Dodd (Puffin, 2008);
Gandhi by Amy Paston (Dorling Kindersley, 2006);
Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire A. Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008);
Alphabet Gallery: An AbC of Contemporary Illustrators (Mammoth, Egmont Books 1999, in association with The Dyslexia Institute);
The Worst Children’s Jobs in History by Tony Robinson (Macmillan, 2006).

Just as well we live a long way away! But I can recommend the bookshop – and if you can’t get there in person then do check out the website. Thank you, Steve and staff, for a memorable visit.