“You know what these kids really need? They need Spanish books. Reading was such a rich part of my childhood; I can’t
believe they are missing out on that.” That was my roommate, Annie, the
long-haired, imaginative beauty who has become one of my best friends. And her
idea to bring books to the children’s center struck me as ingenious. So I
scoured Amazon.com for children’s Spanish books, and bought a suitcase full back to Honduras after my visit home this summer. So we started to read, and
the kids fell in love with books. Then Annie bought another mountainous pile of
books, and then I bought some more, and with the kids I painted a box, and we filled
it to the top. Books, books, and more books of mysteries, and histories, and lessons
and laughs. And so the Club Secreto de los Libros y las Aventuras began.
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| Paint master, Ronny
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| Need a ninja? |
I tell the kids, “Los libros son la llave al mundo!” Books are the key,
the key to open up your world. And they really believe it. You can see it in
their faces, the wonder, the excitement, the curiosity. I have been
inexplicably thrilled and astounded at how successful our book club has been. I started with just one book from the magic tree house adventure series, reading
each night after I finished tucking Renán in for bed. I read to the boys (ages
8-11) because the girls (ages 4-10) were small and fidgety and not all that
interested in sitting still long enough to hear the story yet. “This is our
super secret adventure book club!” I would whisper to them intensely. “We’re going
to have our own secret adventures, but we need to listen to what the book tells
us to do first.” So they would squish in around me, all of them quiet and
sticky with the heat, one on my lap, two by my sides, two leaning over my
shoulders. They were hooked. We flew with dinosaurs and escaped crocodiles in
the Amazon. By the time we met up with some ninjas to solve a mystery in book
#5, the boys had ripped the sheets off their beds, wrapped them around their
heads, and were swinging from the bunks like seasoned ninjas. I had never seen
them use their imaginations like that in all the months I had been here.
After we read for a month, we planned our first real life book club
adventure, as promised. We decided to spend a day exploring the big city
(Ceiba)! I wanted them to learn that reading books truly does open up your
world. I told them that books teach you about interacting with people, about
understanding new places, about making good life choices and bad ones. They fill your
head with thoughts, and thoughts can turn into ideas, and ideas can change
futures. Margaret Fuller, a renowned 19th century American journalist once said,
"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader." These kids can be leaders. In
Canada in 2004 Youth in Transition released a longitudinal study that measured
the effects of literacy abilities on the success of students and young adults.
They found that students with high reading proficiency are much more likely
than other less competent readers to graduate from high school and to
successfully pursue higher education. They are, in effect, more likely to
succeed, because reading is the first crucial step to so many forms of success.
I think of it as pro-knowledge, anti-poverty medicine.
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| The "moving-stairs ride" |
Ok then, back to our real life adventure trip to La Ceiba. The boys enthusiastically
picked out the clothes they would wear (two days in advance), got up at the
crack of dawn the day of to prepare (even though we didn’t leave until 7am) and
waited anxiously at the entrance to the children’s center. I herded them to the
bus door where they climbed up timidly but with an air of importance, as if we
were going on some special mission. Some of them had never spent time in the
city before. Suddenly Ronny jumped up from the bus seat to ask, “Are we going
to go see the stairs that move?! Please, please can we ride on them?!” I had to
laugh, and we added “ride the escalator” to our list of things to do. When we
finally arrived, Annie and I grabbed the boys’ hands and shuttled them from one
corner of La Ceiba to the next. After a few lessons about how to safely cross a
road (let’s face it, with this traffic it’s always a harrowing experience) and
how to flag down a taxi, we set about exploring. The boys acted like they were
at an amusement park, running and pointing and chattering as we taxied from one
attraction to the next. We bought ice-cream and strolled down the pier to watch
the fishermen, played in the ocean-side park, rode the escalators at the mall,
ate pizza as a treat for lunch, took a trolley-ride around the city, discovered
a park full of old trains from the United Fruit Company, and ate more ice-cream
and cookies before collapsing on the bus again. It was a perfect day.
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| ...and more ice-cream |
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| Ceiba shenanigans |
Suddenly, the little girls caught the book bug and were interested in
the books too; they were feeling left out of the fun. Annie came in with her
magical touch and myriad narrator’s voices and wowed all the little girls with
her animated story reading. Now our “secret” book club is not so secret; it’s
the highlight of every night, and the kids make it hard for Annie and I to drag
ourselves and our hoarse voices away to our apartment. But we aren’t the only
ones doing the reading anymore. The kids are reading, and their fluidity,
vocabulary, and comprehension has improved radically. And best of all, their imaginations
are taking flight, which is painfully uncommon here. Annie and I are so proud
of their progress! But we try not to let on too much, because we want reading
to be the most exciting adventure for them, not forced or required like
schoolwork, but an awesome opportunity that other kids in the surrounding
communities would give anything to have.
Just a few weeks ago while I was living with a friend and her family in
Río Esteban, I would bring a book back with me every night after work. Edgardo,
age four, and Meredith, age 7, would jump on me and hug me at the door and then
pull down my backpack and say, “Where is it?! Did you bring the book?!” They
wanted to read stories constantly. Meredith told me that she just wished that
there were a library at her school, because then she would spend every day
reading.
In fact, these young readers are some of the lucky few in all of
Honduras. I was talking to a friend of mine from La Ceiba about the low reading
level of so many Honduran children, and he said, “Well, no one really reads
here. We hardly even own books. It’s just not something we are taught as kids.”
Annie calls it a cultural poverty. Books and knowledge are luxuries, and here
they are not luxuries people can afford. And even those who presumably could
afford them are out of the habit, because the lack of good education and reading
has left a gaping cultural hole.
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Spotted in a cultural center in Guatamala...
"He who reads much and wanders much
sees much and knows much." |
That said, this little book club is not just a few kids reading stories
to pass the time. They are changing the very culture of their lives, their
futures. Now they want to send you a message: Do you want to join our book club
and help us change our lives? Annie and I and all the kids at the children’s
home are asking you for specific monetary support to cover the expenses of the book
club. So far around $650.00 has been spent on purchasing 106 books (on average
$6.13 per book). We would love to raise about that much money again in order to
buy a few more books, some basic seating and paint to create a designated
“library room” where the books will be better protected and where kids for
years to come will have a safe place to read and study. We already found a used
bookshelf, so we are just waiting on a few more supplies to finish our library. Any extra donations will be used to reimburse what we have already spent, considering that I am quickly running out of funds as the year draws to a close! If you feel moved to join us in finishing this priceless project, we would be
thrilled to receive anything you are willing to contribute! If you wish to
donate, just write “book club” in the memo on checks or at my GoFundMe page. Thank you! We
can’t wait to open the doors to our new little library and tell you all about
it.
Fortune Magazine wrote, “Some people will lie, cheat, steal and
back-stab to get ahead... and to think, all they have to do is READ.” There
is plenty lying, cheating, stealing, back-stabbing, and, I would add, killing
going on in Honduras, and kids still struggle to get ahead in the education
system here. So I’m asking you to make the investment of a lifetime and empower
these kids to read so that they can learn, think, create ideas and change their
futures. Welcome to the Adventure Book Club!
These past couple weeks have been marked by filling out graduate school applications, drinking coffee, making plans, praying I will be able to finish those plans, sleeping once in a while, and eating far too many tortillas with beans and avocado (mmm all day every day). All that to say, I'm busy. So for this blog I'm going with the age-old "a picture is worth a thousand words" theme. I'll let these strikingly beautiful, and I mean truly beautiful, Hondurans (and one or two from Guatemala) speak for themselves. Enjoy!
