The Spirit of PaperTigers (SPT) Outreach program seeks to further the overall goals of the PaperTigers Program: bridging cultures and opening minds, promoting greater understanding and empathy among young people from different backgrounds, countries, and ethnicities. More specifically, SPT outreach works to advance education through books and reading, and development through clean and accessible water.

Since 2009, the PaperTigers Program has put books into the hands of young readers through schools and libraries, encouraging literacy, developing understanding and making reading a lifelong habit.  Taking this work a step further, SPT outreach is seeking to ensure that, in areas where there is water stress or water scarcity, the children to whom the books are sent will have access to clean water and good sanitation. The possibility of effective education in certain parts of the world is linked to the basic realities of food and water.  By focusing on books and water together – nourishing both the mind and body – SPT continues to promote literacy and encourage children to become “hungry readers.”   Thus our Outreach motto: “Through Books and Water, Education and Development.”

For more information please head on over to our Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach page. You can also read the latest feedback (and see photos!) from the following Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach participants:

Matènwa Community Learning Center’s “Garden for 10 Families” project ~ Lagonav, Haiti. This project was initiated in May 2011 and directed by Christine Low and Abner Sauveur, founders of  LKMPD  (Matènwa Community Learning Center). An August 2011 update from Mr. Sauveur reads:

“Good afternoon all supporters of vegetable gardens on Lagonav. It is a pleasure to show you how the gardens are reaching several corners of Lagonav. We thank you for how you have helped us with seed and money and visits to learn from other gardeners. Families are now harvesting tomatoes, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach and a variety of other legumes. One family sold 400 gouds worth of carrots in one day. Many people are especially motivated to make vegetable gardens this year. We believe it is thanks to your support that we are progressing with so many people on the island. Thank you for your help.”

Tuba City Public Library – Navajo Reservation ~ Tuba City, Arizona, USA. 

Trish Polacco writes:

“I appreciate your program, it brings smiles to so many children. I am interested in participating in the PaperTigers Book Set project again this year. We’re a small library with a small budget and programs like yours truly mean so much to us. Thank you so much for your support in adding and improving to our collection.”

Head on over to the Spirit of PaperTigers site to see feedback from the Intergenerational School, Cleveland, OH, USA. Cathy Whitehouse, Founder, Principal and Chief-Educator shares with us what two books in the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set were most popular amongst the primary students. Teacher Silvia Kruger-Galicz provides comments from the senior cluster with respect to the two chapter books included in the set.

Anmore Elementary School ~ Anmore, British Columbia, Canada

Canyon de Chelly Elementary School – Navajo Reservation ~ Chinle, Arizona, USA

St. Benedict’s RC Primary School ~ Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, UK

To learn more about the books included in the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set click here

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.

Last year we were pleased to have the Butterfly School involved with our Spirit of PaperTigers Outreach Project. Holly Thompson, author and SCBWI Tokyo regional advisor, hand delivered a 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set to the school.  The photo accompanying the Japan Times article (and reprinted here) shows Heather reading one of the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers books, My Little Round House, to the Butterfly School students.

To read more about the Butterfly School’s involvement with our project and to read their feedback on the 2010 Spirit of PaperTigers Book Set, please click here

We’ll be bringing you Galleries featuring the other books in the SPT 2011 Book Set soon.

James Rumford,
Rain School
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010.

Ages: 4-8

A visual memory from his youthful Peace Corps days in Chad inspired award-winning author-illustrator James Rumford‘s Rain School. As the back flap recounts, one day on vacation during the rainy season, he and his wife Carol “came upon the mud ruins” of a primary school in the town where they were posted. The story behind that scene comprises the plot of Rumford’s fourteenth book.

Rain School begins with the “dry dirt road filling up with children” on the way to their first day of school. In the loose colorful clothing of their hot country, they share the road with little goats, couples on electric bikes, and open air businesses, like the tailor with his pedal sewing machine. At the schoolyard, first grader Thomas realizes that there is no school: no classrooms, no desks. Rumford’s spare, clean language builds atmosphere in poetic tandem with his beguiling pastel and ink illustrations:

“It doesn’t matter. Vibrant, optimistic
There is a teacher.
‘We will build our school,’
she says. ‘This is the first lesson.’”

Together the children and their teacher make mud bricks, mud walls, and mud desks, then roof the structure with straw. Wooden stools, a blackboard, and notebooks and pencils appear. Thomas and the other younger children learn their (Roman) alphabet. They study a map of “Afrique,” with landlocked Chad colored in red.

Nine months later, when the “students’ minds are fat with knowledge,” school ends for the year, and the rainy season begins.“Slowly, the school disappears until there is almost nothing left. It doesn’t matter. The letters have been learned and the knowledge taken away by the children,” who will build a school again when the rains end.

Rain School makes clear the dedication it takes for Chadians to get an education, makes their vitality and resourcefulness apparent.  At the back of the book, a large map of Africa, labeled with all the continent’s countries, provides geographic orientation. An exquisite congruence can occur when story and illustrations come from one mind; James Rumford is a master of this magic, and Rain School another great example of his skill. Children around the world will delight in this engaging story.

Charlotte Richardson
September 2011

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

Ages 5-11

A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope is a timeless fable with particular relevance for today’s young readers.  Michael Foreman, one of the UK’s foremost illustrators and storytellers, has created a masterpiece that combines uncluttered but meaningful prose with beautiful watercolors in contrasting monochrome and joyous, unstoppable color.

A boy finds a “speck of green” among the rubble that is the bleak, monochrome landscape of his home, and nurtures it with almost desperate care.  His world is separated from the outside by a tall, barbed wire fence: but as the plant grows, it covers the fence, bringing welcome shade, and birds and butterflies.  Other children come there to play and help care for the sturdy vine. Then the unthinkable happens.  Soldiers from the other side of the wire rip the vine away, leaving it to die in a ditch.  Color has once again gone out of the world.  The boy’s heartbreak is palpable.

Life continues through a joyless, cold winter but spring brings with it new growth – on the other side of the fence.  A girl appears and nurtures the plants in her turn, under the disinterested eyes of the soldiers.  Soon there are shoots on the boy’s side too.  Tendrils meet and entwine across the fence, and children on both sides come together to play and tend the vine.  The boy realises that it will grow despite the soldiers’ efforts to destroy it – and in the same way, the fence itself will one day disappear.  The seeds for that have been sown.

Perfectly honed for young children, A Child’s Garden also has much to offer older readers.  At first glance, Foreman’s use of monochrome versus the color of the vine and the life it attracts seems very clear cut.  However, a deeper reading, picking out details in the illustrations especially, provides provoking food for thought, reinforcing the tenacity of the seeds of hope not only sown in the boy’s heart but spreading and growing elsewhere. Foreman’s virtuoso illustrations draw out the story’s multilayered complexity and provide wordless stimuli for readers to put out their own tendrils of hope for the future.

A Child’s Garden is a moving, empowering read that, like all good fables, will leave a lasting, deep-rooted impression on its readers.

Marjorie Coughlan
September 2011

Grace Lin is the author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels. Her book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was a huge success and won many awards including the prestigious Newbery Honor.  It was chosen as one of seven books in our Spirit of Paper Tigers Book Set and Grace was one of our nominations for the  2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Don’t miss our interview with Grace or her two Gallery features here and here.