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

As well as ensuring that Mongolian children have access to books from all over the world, Dashdondog Jamba (sometimes also written as Jambyn) is himself the author of more than seventy children’s books. Not many are available in English but you can get a tantalising glimpse of some of them here, at the ICDL. A collection of his retellings of Mongolian Folktales was published recently and is currently our Book of the Month. Dashdondog was instrumental in setting up the Mongolian sections of both SCBWI and IBBY.

You can read an article by Dashdondog, “Children’s Literature in Mongolia Needs Renovation” written for ACCU in 2001, and his speech to IBBY’s 30th Congress in Macau in 2006. Indian author Ramendra Kumar recounts his meeting with Dashdondog here, including an unexpected prelude – and some great photos.

For me, the biggest thrill was finally meeting author Margriet Ruurs in person. Here she is reading her newest book My School in the Rain Forest to the kids. They loved the photos in this book and it was a real eye-opener for them to see some of the schools that kids attend. Thea was most interested in the Egypt page (“Wow – they can see the pyramids from their school!”) and Emma wished she could move to Scotland so she could attend school in a castle! Besides showing readers how schools differ throughout the world, Margriet has another goal for this book: to generate student interest in service learning and to encourage students to adopt a library or school in need of books or teaching resources. Click here to read Margriet’s ideas on this.

The photo to the right shows a book that is truly hot off the press! Author Rebecca Kool had only received this copy of Fly Catcher Boy from the printer a few hours earlier and the kids were quite impressed when she showed them that this was copy #1.

Written in English and using Japanese words and expressions throughout the text, Fly Catcher Boy tells the story of Kenji, who is alone during a thunderstorm one night when he is startled by a noise outside and finds a wet and miserable cat on his doorstep. He brings the cat inside and after introductions to his grandmother the next morning, Kenji and his new friend set off on adventures in their small Japanese town. The book also contains a glossary for phonetic pronunciation and the kanji letter for each Japanese word.

Here’s David J. Smith with his book If the World Were a Village. This book is a classic in our house so Emma and I were especially pleased to get a chance to talk to David and to see his newest book, If America Were a Village. This book uses the same concept as If the World Were a Village and shrinks America down to a village of 100 people, thereby helping children to reach a clearer understanding of the ethnic origins, religions, family profiles, occupations, wealth, belongings and more that make up the Unites States. David also shared with us that next year he will be releasing a book based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

At the start of the festival, every child was given a bag to collect book marks, stickers, autographs, pencils etc. from the authors and illustrators. By the time we were ready to leave, the bags were overflowing with treasures! We stopped for a piece of cake and then we visited the Kidsbook sales booth where Emma, Thea and Will each chose a book to purchase. Emma’s first choice was My School in the Rain Forest but I already had a copy on order: so she and Thea each went with Fred and Pete at the Beach by Cynthia Nugent, while Will chose Alfalfabet A to Z – The Wonderful Words from Agriculture written by Carol Watterson and illustrated by Michela Sorrentino.

Our congratulations go out to the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia (CWILL BC) and to the North Vancouver City Library for putting on such a great event. To all the writers and illustrators who spent time talking with us, sharing their books, signing autographs and giving the kids special treasures, we say THANK YOU.

To see more photos from the event check out CWILL BC’s blog.

I love the Emma books too: however, my favorite book by Margriet is My Librarian is a Camel. Inspired by a newspaper article, this book describes unusual mobile libraries found in thirteen countries, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. Besides bookmobiles, this book shows librarians using animals (camels, horses, donkeys, elephants), bicycles, and even a wheelbarrow, to bring books to children in hard-to-reach areas. Complete with world map and text boxes with country information, this book received the International Reading Association’s Notable Book for Global Awareness recognition and has led to schools adopting mobile libraries projects around the world.

Following a similar photo-essay format, Margriet’s newest book My School in the Rain Forest: How Children Attend School Around the World is now available! Several years in the making, this book shares stories and information about many countries around the world and how children attend school. Readers get to know students — from the arid plains of southern Afghanistan to the rain forests of Guatemala — who are pursuing their dreams of a brighter future. At a school that sits on the edge of the Sahara, students are learning to speak English from a teacher who stands in front of a Webcam in North America. In another part of the world, kids aren’t waiting to ride the bus to school — they are waiting to hop in a boat that will take them to a school that floats on a river. And some kids don’t mind heights, especially those who attend a school on the slope of a mountain in the Himalayas, in one of the most remote corners of the earth.

Margriet often does school visits and will be doing slideshow presentations about her travels and the making of this book. Keep an eye on her blog and hopefully she will share some of the details with us.