CCBC-Net Archives
Announcement: A Message from Katherine Paterson
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 09:07:40 -0500
One final announcement before we launch in "Alice in Wonderland." Katherine Paterson has given us permission to post this letter on CCBC-Net. which she has just sent to members of USBBY to thank them for a monetary gift she was given a year ago at the Reginal Conference in Madison. We feel that her letter will be of interest to all who care about children's literature. More info on USBBY can be found on their web site at: http://www.usbby.org/
September 28, 2000
Dear USBBY Friends:
This is my long delayed thank you for the wonderful gift I was given to give away at the Sectional Meeting in Madison last October. I was totally surprised and overwhelmed by your generousity and thoughtfulness and felt a special responsibility to see that your gift was put to worthy use. I asked several of you for recommendations, but was still hesitating when I opened my newspaper in December to read about the terrible floods and mudslides in the state of Vargas on the coast of Venezuela. I knew immediately that this was the place to which I wanted to send your gift.
I e-mailed Carmen Diana Dearden, past president of IBBY, who lives in Caracas. (Many of you will have met her at the Sectional Meeting.) The timing, as they say in my world, was providential. Carmen Diana who is publisher of Ekare Books and chair of the board of Banco de Libro had been consulting with her colleagues as to what beyond physical necessities they could do for the devastated survivors of what is known in Venezuela as, "The Tragedy." The program they began is called
"Read to Live." All the work is done by volunteers so your money was used to buy books and beautiful yellow book bags.
Using a four-wheel drive to take them over the mountain since the road was impassable, the volunteers first went to a small school in the Barrio of Quenepe, near the port of La Guaira. They had sent word that the story-tellers were coming, and the frightened, exhausted people of the community came and brought their children for an afternoon of respite. In the midst of the story there was a rumbling sound. Everyone, including the story teller, froze. Even the fearless Carmen Diana sidled over to the window to see if the mountain was once more collapsing. She assured everyone that it was just a plane taking off from the airport nearby and the story continued. Before the afternoon was over, books had been read aloud, games played and the volunteers and people of the community were singing together. Afterwards two parents came up and asked to borrow books. It hadn't been a part of the original plan, but the volunteers said, "Of course." And those two parents, one a mother, the other a father, took the books home, gathered their family and neighbors and began to have story time in their own homes.
Banco del Libro had planned to train teachers, and they did. But they also decided to train these parents. Carmen Martinez, team coordinator and her group met with these first parents once a week for five months. As part of the training each week, Carmen Diana read aloud, Bridge to Terabithia. When she got to place in the story when it begins to rain, she could feel the tension mounting in the room.
"Shall I stop reading?" she asked. "Yes." There was a pause, then:
"No. Go on." She read to the end of the book that afternoon. "Everyone was crying including me," she said. And then the mother they called
"Shy Maria" to distinguish her from the other Maria, said quietly: "I think this means that we must begin to build our own new bridges."
And build them they did. There are now 42 lending centers in 42 preschools in the state of Vargas and the Ministry of Education is so impressed that they have offered to fund 60 more. But the wonderful thing is the informal expansion of the program. Three of the teachers who came for training have blocked off streets in their neighborhoods each week for story-telling, reading, and related activities. People whose only reading in the past was the occasional newspaper or magazine are not only discovering the joy of books, but are sharing that love with their families and neighbors. One participant told Carmen Martinez: "Everything is so terrible after the tragedy, but now I know when I need peace, I can open a book and begin to read."
On my way to the IBBY Congress in Cartagena, Colombia, I went to Venezuela to see first hand some of the work of the Read to Live program which your gift had funded. The road is still not open all the way, but we drove down it as far as we could. The great scars are still visible on the mountain, though the fast growing greenery of the tropics is beginning to cover them. "At first," says Carmen Diana, "it looked as though a giant tiger had scratched the mountainside." The great gullies which mark the paths of the destruction remain. In them are the huge boulders that the floods and mud slides brought down. Thousands of bodies remain buried beneath the rocks and now dried mud. Tens of thousands of the living remain homeless. Children have lost parents and parents children. No one has been untouched.
School was on vacation, so we met in Jennifer's house across from the school in Quenepe where the first session of Read to Live was held. In her living room were those first parents who came and who now had made for themselves lovely yellow banners (to match the yellow book bags) announcing that their homes were Read to Live homes where their neighbors could come for story-telling and reading. They introduced themselves to me with Carmen Diana's interpreting. Shy Maria read a thank you letter she had written. Betty told about her work in the tent city with the still homeless children. "Tell them your anecdote, Nancy," someone said. "I work," said Nancy, "with children who are very disturbed. Most of them have to be on medication. Recently I decided to read to them Willy the Dreamer [by Anthony Browne]. Afterwards one of the most troubled and troublesome boys came up to me. 'You don't have to give me any more medicine,' he said. 'I'm going to be like Willy the Dreamer.' He hasn't had any more medicine since that time," Nancy said. "And he's doing okay."
After an hour or so at Jennifer's house we walked up the steep barrio path to Betty's house. It took me a while to realize that the metal rail on the other side of the path within a few feet of Betty's front door stood where there used to be a house. Beyond it now was a deep abyss. "How was it that night?" Carmen Diana asked, realizing just how close Betty's house had been to one of the paths of destruction. "I thought it was the end of the world," Betty said. "The noise was so terrible and it went on and on for twenty-four hours. I gathered my family close, but one of my daughters was not home and I didn't know where she was. Another of my daughters was pregnant and because of the tragedy went into premature labor." The next day Betty walked for miles to an army post to find a helicopter that could take her daughter to a hospital in Caracas. Now the baby of the tragedy was a fat happy seven month old being passed around the room.
Everyone had brought food to Betty's house and someone had even brought a bottle of champagne which was rationed out so each of us could have a sip. Jennifer gave me a beautiful handmade book which she had decorated with quillwork flowers and an English thank you which she said laughingly she had concocted with a dictionary since she didn't know English. The contents of the book was a thank you letter from each member of the group. Betty's youngest daughter who was about eight had made me a bead bracelet. Other children gave me a CD of Venezuelan music and small stones from the area which they had mounted on a polished piece of wood. And, fittingly, one of the little girls read a story aloud to us all.
When we walked back down to the car, several of the group walked down with us to give us a Venezuelan good-bye that, as you might guess, is fairly lengthy with many kisses on the right cheek and warm words. Nelson, the father who had borrowed the first book, felt I should know that he wasn't a very good reader, but he was so convinced how important it was to read to his children and nephews and nieces that he was doing it regularly.
It was hard to say good-bye to the people of Read to Live in Quenepe, and I hope to visit them again. I truly wished that all of you who helped with the gift could have been there as well. But I wanted you to know that your gift is not only being worthily used, but like the loaves and fishes in the New Testament story, it has been taken by our friends in Venezuela and multiplied over and over and will continue to feed a multitude of hungry people for many years to come.
Gratefully,
Katherine Paterson
Received on Tue 03 Oct 2000 09:07:40 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 09:07:40 -0500
One final announcement before we launch in "Alice in Wonderland." Katherine Paterson has given us permission to post this letter on CCBC-Net. which she has just sent to members of USBBY to thank them for a monetary gift she was given a year ago at the Reginal Conference in Madison. We feel that her letter will be of interest to all who care about children's literature. More info on USBBY can be found on their web site at: http://www.usbby.org/
September 28, 2000
Dear USBBY Friends:
This is my long delayed thank you for the wonderful gift I was given to give away at the Sectional Meeting in Madison last October. I was totally surprised and overwhelmed by your generousity and thoughtfulness and felt a special responsibility to see that your gift was put to worthy use. I asked several of you for recommendations, but was still hesitating when I opened my newspaper in December to read about the terrible floods and mudslides in the state of Vargas on the coast of Venezuela. I knew immediately that this was the place to which I wanted to send your gift.
I e-mailed Carmen Diana Dearden, past president of IBBY, who lives in Caracas. (Many of you will have met her at the Sectional Meeting.) The timing, as they say in my world, was providential. Carmen Diana who is publisher of Ekare Books and chair of the board of Banco de Libro had been consulting with her colleagues as to what beyond physical necessities they could do for the devastated survivors of what is known in Venezuela as, "The Tragedy." The program they began is called
"Read to Live." All the work is done by volunteers so your money was used to buy books and beautiful yellow book bags.
Using a four-wheel drive to take them over the mountain since the road was impassable, the volunteers first went to a small school in the Barrio of Quenepe, near the port of La Guaira. They had sent word that the story-tellers were coming, and the frightened, exhausted people of the community came and brought their children for an afternoon of respite. In the midst of the story there was a rumbling sound. Everyone, including the story teller, froze. Even the fearless Carmen Diana sidled over to the window to see if the mountain was once more collapsing. She assured everyone that it was just a plane taking off from the airport nearby and the story continued. Before the afternoon was over, books had been read aloud, games played and the volunteers and people of the community were singing together. Afterwards two parents came up and asked to borrow books. It hadn't been a part of the original plan, but the volunteers said, "Of course." And those two parents, one a mother, the other a father, took the books home, gathered their family and neighbors and began to have story time in their own homes.
Banco del Libro had planned to train teachers, and they did. But they also decided to train these parents. Carmen Martinez, team coordinator and her group met with these first parents once a week for five months. As part of the training each week, Carmen Diana read aloud, Bridge to Terabithia. When she got to place in the story when it begins to rain, she could feel the tension mounting in the room.
"Shall I stop reading?" she asked. "Yes." There was a pause, then:
"No. Go on." She read to the end of the book that afternoon. "Everyone was crying including me," she said. And then the mother they called
"Shy Maria" to distinguish her from the other Maria, said quietly: "I think this means that we must begin to build our own new bridges."
And build them they did. There are now 42 lending centers in 42 preschools in the state of Vargas and the Ministry of Education is so impressed that they have offered to fund 60 more. But the wonderful thing is the informal expansion of the program. Three of the teachers who came for training have blocked off streets in their neighborhoods each week for story-telling, reading, and related activities. People whose only reading in the past was the occasional newspaper or magazine are not only discovering the joy of books, but are sharing that love with their families and neighbors. One participant told Carmen Martinez: "Everything is so terrible after the tragedy, but now I know when I need peace, I can open a book and begin to read."
On my way to the IBBY Congress in Cartagena, Colombia, I went to Venezuela to see first hand some of the work of the Read to Live program which your gift had funded. The road is still not open all the way, but we drove down it as far as we could. The great scars are still visible on the mountain, though the fast growing greenery of the tropics is beginning to cover them. "At first," says Carmen Diana, "it looked as though a giant tiger had scratched the mountainside." The great gullies which mark the paths of the destruction remain. In them are the huge boulders that the floods and mud slides brought down. Thousands of bodies remain buried beneath the rocks and now dried mud. Tens of thousands of the living remain homeless. Children have lost parents and parents children. No one has been untouched.
School was on vacation, so we met in Jennifer's house across from the school in Quenepe where the first session of Read to Live was held. In her living room were those first parents who came and who now had made for themselves lovely yellow banners (to match the yellow book bags) announcing that their homes were Read to Live homes where their neighbors could come for story-telling and reading. They introduced themselves to me with Carmen Diana's interpreting. Shy Maria read a thank you letter she had written. Betty told about her work in the tent city with the still homeless children. "Tell them your anecdote, Nancy," someone said. "I work," said Nancy, "with children who are very disturbed. Most of them have to be on medication. Recently I decided to read to them Willy the Dreamer [by Anthony Browne]. Afterwards one of the most troubled and troublesome boys came up to me. 'You don't have to give me any more medicine,' he said. 'I'm going to be like Willy the Dreamer.' He hasn't had any more medicine since that time," Nancy said. "And he's doing okay."
After an hour or so at Jennifer's house we walked up the steep barrio path to Betty's house. It took me a while to realize that the metal rail on the other side of the path within a few feet of Betty's front door stood where there used to be a house. Beyond it now was a deep abyss. "How was it that night?" Carmen Diana asked, realizing just how close Betty's house had been to one of the paths of destruction. "I thought it was the end of the world," Betty said. "The noise was so terrible and it went on and on for twenty-four hours. I gathered my family close, but one of my daughters was not home and I didn't know where she was. Another of my daughters was pregnant and because of the tragedy went into premature labor." The next day Betty walked for miles to an army post to find a helicopter that could take her daughter to a hospital in Caracas. Now the baby of the tragedy was a fat happy seven month old being passed around the room.
Everyone had brought food to Betty's house and someone had even brought a bottle of champagne which was rationed out so each of us could have a sip. Jennifer gave me a beautiful handmade book which she had decorated with quillwork flowers and an English thank you which she said laughingly she had concocted with a dictionary since she didn't know English. The contents of the book was a thank you letter from each member of the group. Betty's youngest daughter who was about eight had made me a bead bracelet. Other children gave me a CD of Venezuelan music and small stones from the area which they had mounted on a polished piece of wood. And, fittingly, one of the little girls read a story aloud to us all.
When we walked back down to the car, several of the group walked down with us to give us a Venezuelan good-bye that, as you might guess, is fairly lengthy with many kisses on the right cheek and warm words. Nelson, the father who had borrowed the first book, felt I should know that he wasn't a very good reader, but he was so convinced how important it was to read to his children and nephews and nieces that he was doing it regularly.
It was hard to say good-bye to the people of Read to Live in Quenepe, and I hope to visit them again. I truly wished that all of you who helped with the gift could have been there as well. But I wanted you to know that your gift is not only being worthily used, but like the loaves and fishes in the New Testament story, it has been taken by our friends in Venezuela and multiplied over and over and will continue to feed a multitude of hungry people for many years to come.
Gratefully,
Katherine Paterson
Received on Tue 03 Oct 2000 09:07:40 AM CDT
