Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘reading’

A Library in the Subway

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2025| 4 Comments »

Photo: Biblioteka Publiczna w Dzielnicy Targówek m.st. Warszawy.
A library has opened in a new metro station in Warsaw. 

Fans of libraries know that libraries have a way of popping up in all sorts of unlikely — even inimical — places. If you search on the word at this blog, you will find stories about libraries on horseback, in impoverished countries, in war zones, and wherever people find comfort from reading.

Jakub Krupa reported for the Guardian about a new library in a Polish subway station.

“An ‘express’ library has opened in a new metro station in Warsaw, aiming to provide an appealing cultural space to encourage residents and commuters to forgo smartphones in favor of books and, thanks to fresh herbs growing in a vertical garden, a dash of subterranean greenery too.

“The stylish Metroteka [in] the Kondratowicza M2 line metro station in the Polish capital’s Targówek district offers two reading areas for adults and children, as well as a space for public readings and events.

“About 16,000 books are on offer. … Readers can return them on site or through a street-level parcel locker for books, available 24/7.

“Visitors can study or work in a communal area, borrow a laptop to browse the internet, or simply sit down with a complimentary coffee or hot chocolate to unwind after rush hour travel on the metro. …

” ‘Our dream is for Metroteka to become an educational and cultural centre, and not just a place where you borrow your books from,’ says the deputy director of Targówek library, Grażyna Strzelczak-Batkowska. …

“She says the unique subterranean location brings the library closer to busy commuters, ‘both geographically and in terms of time you need to spend on getting the book.’ …

“More than 400 books were leased on the first day, mostly recommended school readings, as well as travel guides and ‘all sorts of how-to books.’

“The library’s innovative model aims to encourage Poles to read more. The annual survey by the National Library of Poland found that only 41% of respondents had read at least one book in 2024, down from the high 50s in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as people turn to TV, streaming services, and phones for entertainment instead.

“These numbers are higher than in southern Europe, but lower than in the Nordic countries, or even the neighboring Czech Republic, the National Library’s director, Tomasz Makowski, says.

“He says there are historical reasons for it – with Poland losing 70% of libraries in the second world war, ‘we had several generations that did not see their parents or grandparents in front of a wall of books’ – but also cultural as ‘reading is not something associated with adulthood,’ but with ‘schools, teachers, librarians, and usually mothers reading to children.’

“ ‘Opening a library in a metro station is like a dream for us,’ Makowski says, as it challenges that stereotype. ‘Libraries should be beautiful and open; inviting, not intimidating. It’s not a shrine, but a place where you can spend time freely, take part in discussions, public consultations, or meet people,’ he says.

“He says the National Library has also opened a ‘loud’ reading room, breaking with the tradition that such areas need to maintain silence, where ‘no one shushes you or tells you to keep quiet. To our surprise, it’s still pretty quiet, but they also talk, give tutoring, different kinds of lessons.’ ”

Good photos at the Guardian, a free paper, here.

What do you think of the library’s chances? I love the optimism behind this effort but can’t help picturing what the subways I know well are like. Has anyone else commuted to work this way?

Read Full Post »

Braille Libraries in Danger

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: Hannah Goeke/Christian Science Monitor.
One of the National Braille Press’s braille machines operating in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood.

As I read today’s article about braille services losing funding, I am struck particularly by an activist’s comment on the importance to blind children of meeting other blind children in the braille libraries. I remember my own insensitivity to disability as a child. Children sense difference sand sometimes they are not kind. Being with others who share an issue like blindness would be huge.

But opportunities like that are now threatened — at both federal and state levels.

Hannah Goeke writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Marci Carpenter reconnected with her love of reading through her fingertips. When her vision became more limited, learning braille gave her a new way to experience the world. She still remembers how the words of Robert Frost’s poems came alive again through soft bumps embossed on thick paper.

“But it was the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in Seattle that gave her a place to connect.

“ ‘That was the first time I had ever experienced being around shelves and shelves of braille books. It was this really liberating experience,’ recalls Ms. Carpenter. Over the next five decades, she returned again and again to browse through the Major League Baseball schedule, check out the Constitution – and science fiction – and discover new volumes.

“Today, Ms. Carpenter, who now serves as president of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington, is facing a new urgent need.

“On July 1, the doors to the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library swung shut to the public for in-person exploration and gathering due to a lack of state funding. As needs increase and revenue growth slows, the state of Washington is facing a budget deficit. Ms. Carpenter, who was among those working with legislators to secure funding for libraries, came up empty-handed. …

“The Seattle library is one of nearly 100 libraries and outreach centers nationwide that form the network of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, which provides free braille and audio materials through the Library of Congress.

“A small staff is determined to keep the library running. Since July 1, it has offered services by appointment only. ‘We are getting about our normal number of calls,’ writes Danielle Miller, the library’s director, in an email. ‘We have had to turn away people who wanted to come in and use the library.’ …

“Patrons say they are most saddened by that loss. Through in-person workshops and programming, the library provides a sense of belonging and community. Preserving free access to braille materials and encouraging braille literacy – especially for children – is imperative, according to experts and educators. …

“The vast majority of the 26% of employed blind people are braille readers, according to the National Braille Press in Boston. However, despite reading’s link to higher education and employment in the United States, only 12% of school-age blind children in the U.S. can read braille, the NBP estimates.

“While tape recorders and synthesized speech are useful tools, they do not teach the ability to read, write, and spell, says Kim Charlson, the executive director of the Perkins Library in Watertown, Massachusetts. …

“Braille opens the door to independence, not only on a large scale but also in small ways. What is habitual to sighted people becomes a significant hindrance for blind people, says Ms. Charlson. For example, being able to jot down a telephone number, take a note, or create labels to find the warranty for your new stove.

“Ms. Charlson shares a lesson she learned about the everyday importance of using braille after adding an unconventional ingredient to her chili recipe.

“ ‘I just opened it and tossed it in. I added my tomato sauce,’ she says with a laugh. ‘My husband [who is also blind] took a bite and he said, “This is kind of interesting.” And I said, “What do you mean? It’s chili.” And he goes, “Well, it’s got fruit cocktail in it.” ‘ Ms. Charlson now adds braille labels to her kitchen jars and cans.

“While funding uncertainty has braille libraries on edge, at the National Braille Press, President Brian Mac Donald says the demand for braille books remains high. He expects that to continue. …

“Says Mr. Mac Donald, ‘We have parents that have written testimonials saying, “I wish you could have seen the excitement of my son when he read his first book with us … in braille.” ‘

“On a recent weekday, the NBP presses are humming, business as usual, in a brownstone building in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. In the basement, Elizabeth Bouvier binds books together with practiced precision as the rhythmic clatter of machines pressing dots into thick paper echoes off concrete walls.

“Ms. Bouvier is blind. So are many of her colleagues at the NBP, where a small staff produces millions of braille pages each year, including children’s books.

“The closure of the Seattle library means the shuttering of its children’s room. It also means the end of introductory braille workshops and story times with children’s books featuring braille pages added that allow blind and sighted kids to read together. …

“Like many, Ms. Carpenter was the only blind child in her public school. The closing of the children’s room ‘is a loss of community,’ she says. ‘It is important for blind children to meet other blind children.’

“Ms. Miller’s and Ms. Carpenter’s inboxes have been flooded with inquiries about how people can help. Ms. Carpenter is telling them to wait for the right moment. When funding talks for the next state budget cycle start in 2026, she has no doubt that the blind community will turn up in big numbers to explain why access to the library’s services is essential to them.

“ ‘You know the most impactful action people have is their story,’ she says. ‘Anyone can request to speak with a legislator.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

Read Full Post »

Reading the Book vs Listening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 25, 2025| 5 Comments »

Photo: John.

People absorb information differently, so to each his own. I hope today’s attempt to explain scientific differences between reading a book and listening to one doesn’t make you think reading is necessarily better than listening. We all know the vital importance of being read to as a child.

Let’s see what Stephanie N. Del Tufo, assistant professor of education & human development at the University of Delaware, has to say at Science Alert, via the Conversation.

“As a language scientist, I study how biological factors and social experiences shape language. My work explores how the brain processes spoken and written language, using tools like MRI and EEG.

“Whether reading a book or listening to a recording, the goal is the same: understanding. But these activities aren’t exactly alike. Each supports comprehension in different ways. Listening doesn’t provide all the benefits of reading, and reading doesn’t offer everything listening does. Both are important, but they are not interchangeable.

“Your brain uses some of the same language and cognitive systems for both reading and listening, but it also performs different functions depending on how you’re taking in the information.

“When you read, your brain is working hard behind the scenes. It recognizes the shapes of letters, matches them to speech sounds, connects those sounds to meaning, then links those meanings across words, sentences and even whole books. The text uses visual structure such as punctuation marks, paragraph breaks or bolded words to guide understanding. You can go at your own speed.

“Listening, on the other hand, requires your brain to work at the pace of the speaker. Because spoken language is fleeting, listeners must rely on cognitive processes, including memory to hold onto what they just heard.

“Speech is also a continuous stream, not neatly separated words. When someone speaks, the sounds blend together in a process called coarticulation. This requires the listener’s brain to quickly identify word boundaries and connect sounds to meanings.

“Beyond identifying the words themselves, the listener’s brain must also pay attention to tone, speaker identity and context to understand the speaker’s meaning.

“Many people assume that listening is easier than reading, but this is not usually the case. Research shows that listening can be harder than reading, especially when the material is complex or unfamiliar.

“Listening and reading comprehension are more similar for simple narratives, like fictional stories, than for nonfiction books or essays that explain facts, ideas or how things work. My research shows that genre affects how you read. In fact, different kinds of texts rely on specialized brain networks.

“Fictional stories engage regions of the brain involved in social understanding and storytelling. Nonfiction texts, on the other hand, rely on a brain network that helps with strategic thinking and goal-directed attention.

“Reading difficult material tends to be easier than listening from a practical standpoint, as well. Reading lets you move around within the text easily, rereading particular sections if you’re struggling to understand, or underlining important points to revisit later.

“A listener who is having trouble following a particular point must pause and rewind, which is less precise than scanning a page and can interrupt the flow of listening, impeding understanding.

“Even so, for some people, like those with developmental dyslexia, listening may be easier. Individuals with developmental dyslexia often struggle to apply their knowledge of written language to correctly pronounce written words, a process known as decoding. Listening allows the brain to extract meaning without the difficult process of decoding.

“One last thing to consider is engagement. In this context, engagement refers to being mentally present, actively focusing, processing information and connecting ideas to what you already know.

“People often listen while doing other things, like exercising, cooking or browsing the internet – activities that would be hard to do while reading. When researchers asked college students to either read or listen to a podcast on their own time, students who read the material performed significantly better on a quiz than those who listened.

“Many of the students who listened reported multitasking, such as clicking around on their computers while the podcast played. This is particularly important, as paying attention appears to be more important for listening comprehension than reading comprehension. …

“Each activity offers something different, and they are not interchangeable. The best way to learn is not by treating books and audio recordings as the same, but by knowing how each works and using both to better understand the world.”

More at the Conversation, here.

Read Full Post »

The Radio Reading Service Nobody Knows

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 13, 2025| 1 Comment »

Photo: Nieman Labs.
Volunteers reading the newspaper for radio listeners who are not able to read for themselves.

I’d like to say a word for radio. Every time a new, shiny technology comes along, we hear that the old ones are dead. Especially radio. Radio is dead more often than than theater.

But I love radio, and I’m not the only one. I love it for news without pictures, because pictures alter the story. I love it for interesting stories that are not news. I can find those online, too, but the human voice is the part that means most to me. I like it better than podcasts, which seem to overdramatize, as if I need scary music to understand the next bit might be important.

In today’s story, from Nieman Labs, Neel Dhanesha reports on a little-known radio service that means the world to a particular audience.

“A few years ago the staff at Aftersight, a nonprofit radio service based in Boulder, Colorado, got an angry call from a man whose child was trying to watch Barney on PBS Kids.

“ ‘All we can hear is you guys reading the paper!’ the man said.

“His child had accidentally switched the audio channel on their TV, and the family had stumbled onto a form of broadcasting that, for the most part, remains hidden away by design: They had discovered a radio reading service.

“When color television arrived in the United States, [it] was the product of many technological breakthroughs, but the one most relevant to our story is the sideband, or subcarrier: a modulated radio wave that can, in essence, carry more information on the same frequency. Color TV worked by sending a black and white picture in the main band of a frequency and a color picture in the sideband, and the two bands would then be recombined in the tubes of a color TV.

“Radio reading services work on the same premise, except instead of pictures they transmit a radio broadcast. Where color TV brought more vibrant pictures to living rooms around the country, radio reading services, which are also called audio information services, have almost the opposite audience: every day, across the country, hundreds of volunteers read newspapers, magazines, and books on the radio for thousands of listeners with blindness or vision loss, bringing them access to local, national, and international news around the clock.

“ ‘I always tell folks we’re on super-secret radio stations,’ said Bekah Jerde, executive director of Radio Talking Books Service, a reading service based in Omaha, Nebraska. She’s also the vice president and treasurer of the International Association of Audio Information Services (IAAIS) a collective of 39 audio information services that are mostly based in the U.S. (and one in Australia). The stations are ‘super-secret’ because they are designed to be used by people with vision impairments and other disabilities that can make reading or turning pages difficult. Thanks to a provision in copyright law, copyrighted materials like books, magazines, and newspapers can be reproduced for free for the sake of accessibility.

“The first radio reading service debuted in Minnesota in 1969 as a side-channel on KSJR — the birthplace of Minnesota Public Radio. That first ‘Radio Talking Book’ schedule included two hours of the Minneapolis Tribune newspaper in the morning and two hours of the Saint Paul Dispatch in the evening, with readings from magazines and books in the intervening hours. More than 50 years later, the live morning newspaper reading — now from the Minnesota Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press — remains the service’s most popular programming.

“Today there are 79 of the services across the country. … In the past, listeners who wanted to tune into those super-secret stations would have to send in an application for a radio that could pick up their signal or, as the man in Colorado learned, switch their audio language on certain TV channels. But streaming has come for the radio reading services, just as it has for TV.

“ ‘We went online three years ago, which did wonders for our listenership,’ said Michael Benzin, executive director of the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading service in Buffalo, New York. ‘The big restriction we always had was that our listeners needed one of our radios, so we were managing a large inventory of radios, picking them up and dropping them off all the time. But now anybody with an internet connection can play our live feed on a tablet or a cell phone or a computer.’

“The majority of the listeners for these services are over the age of 65 and have aged into vision loss or other disabilities that prevent them from reading the news on their own, Jerde told me. That means they often don’t know how to use technology like screen readers, which don’t play well with many websites anyway. The radio reading services provide their listeners with an experience that’s hard to replicate with a computer: reading a newspaper or magazine from cover to cover, including comics and grocery ads. …

“For many people, especially in rural areas with poor internet access, the reading services’ radio and TV broadcasts are essential lifelines to the outside world. Some of the services even allow people to listen by dialing a phone number.

“ ‘Part of our goal is to go out in different parts of the state, especially the rural areas, and ask how people are getting their information,’ said Kim Ann Wardlow, executive director of Aftersight and president of the IAAIS. ‘We’re trying to figure out if there are other things we should be reading to best serve folks who are seeking hyperlocal information that isn’t necessarily in the traditional newspaper anymore.’ Both Aftersight and the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service have started offering programs in Spanish. ….

“Every service in the network is tiny, often run on a shoestring (usually) nonprofit budget: Benzin, in addition to making programming decisions, told me that part of his job as executive director includes mowing the lawn, vacuuming, and washing the windows at the Niagara Frontier service’s office. IAAIS has a program share, similar to the Public Radio Exchange, that allows member stations to share content to help fill the schedule. And while each has its own ways to raise funds, Wardlow, Benzin, and Jerde all told me one thing is the same across the country: the volunteers are incredibly committed to their work.

“ ‘I’ve got volunteers who’ve been coming in every week for thirty years,’ Benzin told me. ‘I’ve been working in the nonprofit world for going on 40 years, and I’ve never had a volunteer base this dedicated.’ ”

I’m thinking of other groups that could benefit: English language learners and people who simply never learned to read. I wish there were more publicity for this service.

More at Nieman Lab, here.

Read Full Post »

Stealthy Cold War Lit

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

 Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/Bridgeman Images/The Guardian.

Of course, it couldn’t happen here, right? As we children always said during the time of the Cold War when someone opposed us, “It’s a free country!” And if we had applied that to reading material, we would have known we could read whatever we wanted. No need to smuggle anything in.

Well, what would that be like? In an edited extract from Charlie English’s book about Poland, The Best Kept Secret of the Cold War, the Guardian gives us an idea.

“The volume’s glossy dust jacket shows a 1970s computer room, where high priests of the information age, dressed in kipper ties and flares, tap instructions into the terminals of some ancient mainframe. The only words on the front read ‘Master Operating Station,’ ‘Subsidiary Operating Station’ and ‘Free Standing Display.’ Is any publication less appetizing than an out-of-date technical manual?

“Turn inside, however, and the book reveals a secret. It isn’t a computer manual at all, but a Polish language edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s famous anti-totalitarian novel, which was banned for decades by communist censors in the eastern bloc.

“This copy lives now in the library of Warsaw University, but for much of the cold war it belonged to the Polish writer and dissident Teresa Bogucka. It was Teresa’s father, the art critic Janusz Bogucki, who first brought it to Poland. In 1957, during a window of liberalization that opened after Stalin’s death, Janusz picked up the Orwell translation from a Polish bookshop in Paris, smuggled it back through the border and gave it to his daughter. Teresa was only 10 or 11 years old then, but she was a precocious reader, and recognized the ways in which communist Poland mirrored Orwell’s fictional dystopian state. …

“Years later, in 1976, when Bogucka joined the emerging Polish opposition movement, she decided to create a library of books that had bypassed the state censor, and donated her own small collection, including this Nineteen Eighty-Four. The SB security service, Poland’s KGB, kept continual watch on her, eavesdropping on her conversations, arresting her and searching her apartment, so she asked neighbors to store the forbidden books. Much of the time, though, they would be circulating among readers, since this would be a ‘Flying Library,’ which rarely touched the  ground.

“Bogucka’s system of covert lending ran through a network of coordinators, each of whom was responsible for their own tight group of readers. She sorted the books into categories – politics, economics, history, literature – and divided them into packages of 10, before allocating each coordinator a particular day to pick up their parcel, which they carried away in a rucksack. The coordinator would drop the books back the following month at a different address, before picking up a new set.

“The demand for Bogucka’s books was such that soon she needed more, and these could only come from the west. Activist friends passed word to London, where émigré publishers arranged shipments of 30 or 40 volumes at a time, smuggling them through the iron curtain aboard the sleeper trains that shuttled back and forth between Paris and Moscow, stopping in Poland along the way. By 1978, Teresa Bogucka’s Flying Library had a stock of 500 prohibited titles.

“How many people read her copy of Orwell’s book in those crucial cold war years? Hundreds, probably thousands. And this was just one of millions of titles that arrived illegally in Poland at that time. As well as via trains, books arrived by every possible conveyance: aboard yachts; in secret compartments built into vans and trucks; by balloon; in the post. Mini-editions were slipped into the sheet music of touring musicians, or packed into food tins or Tampax boxes. In one instance, a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago was carried on a flight to Warsaw hidden in a baby’s nappy.

“What some in the east suspected, but very few knew for sure, was that the uncensored literature flooding the country wasn’t reaching Poles by chance. It was sent as part of a decades-long US intelligence operation, known in Washington as the ‘CIA book program,’ designed, in the words of the program’s leader, George Minden, to assault the eastern bloc with an ‘offensive of free, honest thinking.’ Minden believed that ‘truth is contagious,’ and if they could only deliver it to the oppressed peoples of the Soviet zone, it was certain to have an effect.

“From today’s vantage point, when disinformation threatens western liberal democracy as never before, and censorship and book bans are once again turning schools and libraries into ideological battlegrounds, the CIA literary programs appear almost quaint.

Although they had political goals, they must rank among the most highbrow of psychological warfare operations.

“Along with copies of the Manchester Guardian Weekly and the New York Review of Books, the CIA sent works by blacklisted authors such as Boris Pasternak, Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky, anti-totalitarian writings by Hannah Arendt and Albert Camus, literary fiction from Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut, writing advice from Virginia Woolf, the plays of Václav Havel and Bertolt Brecht, and the spy thrillers of John le Carré.

“Later, as well as smuggling books, the CIA would fund and ship presses and printing equipment into Poland, so that the banned titles could be reproduced in huge quantities by underground printers in situ. Few individuals were more central to these latter operations than the dissident publisher Mirosław Chojecki, known to the CIA by the cryptonym QRGUIDE.

“On a Tuesday evening in March 1980, the police came to arrest Chojecki for the 43rd time.”

Exciting stuff! Read more at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

Read Full Post »

Why Reading Is Big in Ukraine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 26, 2025| 2 Comments »

Photo: Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor.
Ihor Pohorielov, commercial director of Ranok Publishing, at the company’s bomb-damaged offices, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nov. 4, 2024.

If ants can keep working and rebuilding after we’ve knocked over their anthill, how much more humans in war zones?

Among the many buildings damaged or destroyed by the Russian invasion in Ukraine are publishers of books. But books remain strong and Ukrainians keep reading.

Here’s a story by Howard LaFranchi at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Across Ukraine, but especially in Kharkiv, the country’s publishing capital, Russia’s war has been something of a boon to the nation’s publishing industry. More Ukrainians are seeking solace and distraction in books, and interest in Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian-language books is spiking.

“Many of the country’s publishing houses – from textbook-publishing giants to boutique operations specializing in culture – are keeping busy. And this despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made publishing houses a key target of his war on Ukrainian culture.

“Publishers say a combination of their resolve to keep operating and a reawakened enthusiasm for books among a variety of readers is keeping the presses running.

“ ‘The war is reminding Ukrainians that books are an outlet for joy, for culture, for travel, when other outlets are closed to us,’ says Yuliia Orlova, general director of Vivat Publishing.

“ ‘We hear all the time about people rediscovering the joys of books as they spend less time on their computers and phones,’ she says. ‘People want to distract themselves from all the sad and depressing things going on around them, so they turn to fiction and fantasy. It’s their way to escape.’

“One night in November, Ihor Pohorielov was awakened by a Russian bomb blast that nearly shook him out of bed. His thoughts went to the modern offices and cavernous storage facilities where he works as the commercial director for Kharkiv’s Ranok Publishing, and which had already been the target of Russian air strikes. …

” ‘I thought of the orders we need to get out and the clients we need to serve – so I came into work’ the next day. …

“Across Ukraine, but especially in Kharkiv, the country’s publishing capital, Russia’s war has been something of a boon to the book publishing business.

“As more Ukrainians seek solace and distraction in books, and as interest in Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian-language books spikes, many of the country’s publishing houses – from textbook-publishing giants to boutique operations specializing in culture – are keeping busy.

“And this despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made publishing and printing houses a key target of his war on Ukrainian culture.

“Kharkiv’s publishing industry was shaken to its core last May when a Russian S-300 missile struck the giant Faktor-Druk, one of Europe’s largest printing houses. The blast destroyed presses, incinerated some 100,000 books, and knocked out the three publishing companies housed there. …

“But the sense of devastation was short-lived. In a show of solidarity, several European publishers offered to print Ukrainian books for distribution to millions of Ukrainian refugees around Europe.

“An American philanthropic organization, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, quickly agreed to pick up the tab for Faktor-Druk’s reconstruction. …

“ ‘Printing in Kharkiv is hanging on despite the almost daily attacks on the city,’ … says Yuliia Orlova, general director of Vivat Publishing, a division of the Faktor Group. …

“Ms. Orlova does not hide the fact that the war has been devastating for Ukrainian publishing in many ways, especially for the people who work in the sector. ‘The attacks and the destruction in the city have a big impact on the mental health of our workers. People don’t sleep and they are constantly worried for their families,’ she says. …

“Since 2022, the number of registered publishers in Ukraine has plummeted from about 1,600 to 150, Ms. Orlova says. …

“But Ms. Orlova cites another statistic that underscores the bright side of Ukrainian book publishing: Over the same period, the total number of books printed grew by 70%.

“The reasons for that jump are largely related to the war. Russia’s systematic destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure has meant widespread power outages and spotty access to the internet, Ms. Orlova says. ‘We hear all the time about people rediscovering the joys of books as they spend less time on their computers and phones,’ she says. …

“Mr. Putin’s war on Ukrainian culture – targeting museums, churches, universities, and publishing houses – is feeding a renewed interest in history, language, art, and literature that confirm Ukrainian nationhood, publishers say.

” ‘Interest among Ukrainians in who we are was already starting to grow, but it was the full-scale invasion that really encouraged this desire to know more about our history and culture,’ says Oleksandr Savchuk, whose specialty Kharkiv publishing house carries his name.

“ ‘For many Ukrainians, the picture of who we are was like a puzzle with lost pieces,’ he says. ‘But now people are finding those pieces so we can complete the full picture.’

“To help nurture that process, in 2023 the philosophy professor and publisher opened a facility he calls a ‘Book Strongroom,’ a combination bookstore, event space, and neighborhood bomb shelter adjacent to his publishing operations. …

“Oleksandr Savchuk is a small player who has published about 50 titles over the last decade. … ‘For the 12 years before the invasion I was suffering to try to show people their great history and culture. It was a hard-going process,’ he says. … ‘I see now that I’m being heard.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall, reasonable subscriptions rates for a paper unusually strong in international news.

Read Full Post »

Grandparents Fight Book Bans

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 18, 2025| 7 Comments »

Photo: JRE.
Now almost 12 and 15, these two are good readers.

I recently learned about a group called Grandparents for Truth, organized in reaction to other groups pushing book bans in schools and threatening librarians.

I am not a member, but I think reading is important and I understand enough history to know what happens to countries that start with book bans, so I thought I would share the information.

Huda Hassan wrote at MSN.com in late 2024, “Last August, a retired special-education teacher named Holly Hall joined a rally of grandparents warring against book censorship in Temecula, a small Southern California town. Locals had gathered to oppose a school-board decision to ban a social-studies reader, Social Studies Alive!, for citing Harvey Milk — the first openly gay politician elected in the state. ‘The Harvey Milk reference was in the supplemental materials,’ 72-year-old Hall says, ‘which meant that it wouldn’t have even been mentioned in some classes.’

“The world of literature is currently ablaze with rapidly escalating book bans targeting narratives and histories about gender and sexual identity, race, class, and just about anyone deemed ‘other.’

“[In 2024] alone, 1,128 books have been challenged, according to the American Library Association, which documents ongoing censorship attempts across the nation. Florida is the state with the most banned books (3,135 bans, according to PEN America), and in the 2022–23 school year, there were book bans in 153 districts across 33 states, including Texas, Missouri, Utah, and Pennsylvania.

“Earlier this year, schools in Escambia County, Florida, removed 1,600 books on gender and race from school libraries and, through this process, even banned multiple dictionaries. In August, New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts college, disposed of hundreds of library books, emptying the school’s Gender and Diversity Center. Then, this fall, major publishers — including Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers — filed a lawsuit against book-removal provisions in Florida (through HB 1069, a law introduced in 2023).

“When Hall, who taught in California for 40 years, spoke out at that rally in Temecula, she gave an impassioned speech about censorship in her state. ‘I addressed the dangers of banning books,’ she says. ‘It’s not 1933 Germany.’ Opponents attended the Temecula rally too, such as Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based parenting group formed in 2021 that’s pushing for banning books on race and what it calls ‘gender ideology.’ A few months prior, the same three school-board trustees Hall spoke against had voted to ban the school’s study of critical race theory the day they were sworn into office. This preemptive act confused many, as no courses on critical race theory had been offered at the school. …

“As parents across the country and groups like Moms for Liberty have joined the attacks on literature, grandparents like Hall are mobilizing in response, and they are afraid. ‘I am so concerned about my country, our freedom, and the world,’ Hall says.

“But she felt encouraged to speak in front of her peers and opponents last year because she knew she was not alone. She was invited to the rally by Grandparents for Truth, a national organization formed in the summer of 2023 to fight for the right to read. ‘A neighbor walked by and told me about the group. He had a sign in his yard,’ says Hall. …

“In Philadelphia, Ruth Littner, one of the earliest members to join Grandparents for Truth last summer, discovered the collective through her daughter, Alana Byrd, the national field director of People for the American Way. Like Hall, the pair are committed to countering book banning despite heckling or pushback from the police. ‘I am the daughter of two Holocaust survivors,’ Littner says on the phone from her home. ‘When Alana told me she had an initiative to fight this kind of authoritarianism, I jumped right on that. I was the first one to get the Grandparents for Truth T-shirt.’

More at MSN, here. No paywall.

Read Full Post »

Harlem’s Great Librarians

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 2, 2024| 6 Comments »

Photo: New York Public Library.
In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

I have read numerous accounts of what a public library has meant to poor children with insatiable curiosity. The most recent was the autobiography Up Home by future intellectual and university president Ruth J. Simmons. She grew up in a desperately poor Black sharecropper’s family in Texas. Books and encouragement from Black teachers meant everything.

Meanwhile in Harlem, Black librarians meant everything to generations of Northern children.

Jennifer Schuessler reports at the New York Times, “It was a banner day in the history of American libraries — and in Black history. On May 25, 1926, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired the celebrated Afro-Latino bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection of more than 4,000 books, manuscripts and other artifacts.

“A year earlier, the library had established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials, at its 135th Street branch in Harlem. Now, the branch would be home to a trove of rare items, from some of the earliest books by and about Black people to then-new works of the brewing Harlem Renaissance.

“Schomburg was the most famous of the Black bibliophiles who, starting in the late 19th century, had amassed impressive ‘parlor libraries’ in their homes. Such libraries became important gathering places for Black writers and thinkers at a time when newly created public libraries — which exploded in number in the decades after 1870 — were uninterested in Black materials, and often unwelcoming to Black patrons.

“Schomburg summed up his credo in a famous 1925 essay, writing, ‘The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.’ In a 1913 letter, he had put it less decorously: The items in his library were ‘powder with which to fight our enemies. …

“Today, figures like Schomburg and the historian and activist W.E.B. Du Bois (another collector and compiler of Black books) are hailed as the founders of the 20th-century Black intellectual tradition. But increasingly, scholars are also uncovering the important role of the women who often ran the libraries, where they built collections and — just as important — communities of readers.

“ ‘Mr. Schomburg’s collection is really the seed,’ said Joy Bivins, the current director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as the 135th Street library, currently home to more than 11 million items, is now known. ‘But in many ways, it is these women who were the institution builders.’

“Many were among the first Black women to attend library school, where they learned the tools and the systems of the rapidly professionalizing field.

On the job, they learned these tools weren’t always suited to Black books and ideas, so they invented their own.

“At times, they battled overt and covert censorship. … But whether they worked in world-famous research collections or modest public branch libraries, these pioneers saw their role as not just about tending old books but also about making room for new people and new ideas.

“ ‘These librarians were very tuned in and understood that a cultural movement also needs a space,’ said Laura E. Helton, a historian at the University of Delaware and author of the recent book Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History. …

“In the 1920 census, only 69 of the 15,297 Americans who listed their profession as librarian were Black. Many cities in the segregated South had no library services at all for Black citizens. And even in the North, those branches that did serve them often had few books geared to their interests, and sometimes no card catalogs or reference collections at all.

“That started to change, if slowly. In 1924, in Chicago, Vivian Harsh became the first Black librarian to lead a public library branch there. [But] no place captures the transformations of the era more than Harlem, where, starting in 1920, a white librarian named Ernestine Rose hired four young Black librarians at the 135th Street library. …

“The poet Arna Bontemps (who himself later became a librarian) recalled visiting the 135th Street library after his arrival in Harlem in 1924. ‘There were a couple of very nice-looking girls sitting at the desk, colored girls,’ he said. ‘I had never seen that before.’ …

“Other ‘girls’ at the branch fostered the neighborhood’s artistic ferment in different ways. Among them was Regina Andrews, a young librarian from Chicago (where she was mentored by Harsh) who came to New York City on vacation in 1922 and decided to stay. She … soon settled into an apartment at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue with two friends who worked at Opportunity, a new magazine that aimed to capture the creative ferment bubbling up in Harlem. Nicknamed Dream Haven, the apartment quickly became a salon and crash pad for some of the most celebrated figures of the period.

“It was there that Alain Locke held some planning meetings for the special issue of the Survey Graphic magazine that later grew into his landmark 1925 anthology The New Negro. And it was there that many Black artists and writers who attended the 1924 Civic Club dinner now recognized as an opening bell of the Harlem Renaissance gathered.”

Read more at the Times, here.

Read Full Post »

Bookbinders on TikTok

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 8, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: The Guardian.
Innocent Monsters is an example of a book bound by Geena of ‘beaudelaireslibrary.’ Bookbinding is attracting interest on TikTok.

TikTok comes in for a lot of criticism these days, not least because people think its Chinese ownership enables the Chinese government to spy on the US. For all I know, that could be a legitimate concern, but some activities on TikTok sure seem innocent. I can’t imagine any government secrets hidden in bookbinding lessons, for example.

David Barrett reports at the Guardian about the curious hobby that has taken hold there.

“The videos often begin with every bibliophile’s nightmare: a person ripping the covers off a book. They are not vandals, however; they are bookbinders, taking part in a growing trend for replacing the covers of favorite works to make unique hardback editions, and posting about their creations on TikTok and Instagram.

“Mylyn McColl, a member of the UK-based Society of Bookbinders, runs their international bookbinding competition. She said: ‘It is great to see people taking on our craft and turning their favourite novels into treasured bindings.’ …

“Emma, 28, posts on social media as The Binary Bookbinder, after discovering the hobby a year ago. ‘I was scrolling through social media and I came across a video of someone doing it and was intrigued,’ she said. …

“After a practice attempt with a few sheets of printer paper and some card-stock, Emma, who lives on the East Coast in the US, graduated to re-binding books from her favorite genre, fantasy. ‘It is deeply satisfying re-binding a book to look like it would belong in the world I’m reading about,’ she said. …

” ‘Overall it is a relaxing hobby, but it still comes with its challenges. I like to use my tech background to integrate 3D printed, laser cut, or electronic parts in the books I rebind and that can be difficult.’ …

“A search for ‘bookbinding’ on TikTok produces more than 60 million results, with high-speed time lapse videos showing a brand new product emerging from a mass-produced paperback. Bookbinding tools and equipment include specialist glues, and vinyl cutters for making silhouettes or cameos on covers, which can cost more than £300 [~$384].

“Emma said interest in bookbinding was being driven in part by BookTok, the TikTok genre that has boosted sales for the publishing industry, and the general increase in reading post-pandemic. … ‘Different parts of the same story will resonate with people, so owning a copy of a book that has your favourite quote, image or symbol from the book on the cover is something special.’

“McColl, of the Society of Bookbinders, said: ‘Historically the society was made up predominantly by older people, often retirees enjoy new free time. But that is changing … on the London committee there are now people in 20s, 30s, 40s.’

“Some bookbinders do it for their own enjoyment, while others sell their creations through platforms like Etsy. Geena, who posts on Instagram as baudelaireslibrary, saw it as an opportunity to give physical form to a genre generally only available online – fan fiction.

“The 33-year-old from Wiltshire said: ‘I started bookbinding nearly a year ago. I had been reading Harry Potter fan fiction for about two years. … I had absolutely previous knowledge on how to create a book – I didn’t know it was possible to do at home without commercial equipment.’

“Geena says bookbinding encompasses ‘four or five hobbies,’ allowing her to use skills from her other pastimes, such as embroidery and crochet. She says, ‘With the rise of screens dominating people’s time, I think that creative hobbies where you use your hands and make something from scratch bring a simple joy that [people] haven’t experienced before. It taps into a part of the brain that can improve mental health, and is a real mood booster.’

“Geena says she has made new friends through the hobby, and is hoping to attend a meet-up of British amateur bookbinders later this year. Emma has attended meet-ups in the US. She said: ‘The community aspect is wonderful, and I’ve really been able to bond with people across the world.’

“Jennifer Büchi of the American Academy of Bookbinding, based in Colorado, said there had been a shift in how people discovered the hobby. …

” ‘We saw a big increase in students who’d started learning to bind books online and through social media after the pandemic. It’s been great for us because there’s a lot more interest in our classes – our introductory courses fill up within hours of being posted. Anything that drives interest in the book ultimately helps more students find us, and more students means more folks carrying the craft forward.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

Read Full Post »

Storytelling for Kids in Karachi Slums

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 3, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Zofeen T Ebrahim/The Guardian.
A GoRead worker helps to educate children in Pakistani slums through storytelling. The GoRead director says, “We cannot expect children to want to read if we don’t read to them first.”

If it’s true that Sauron is always collecting his strength to rise again, it’s also true that people who do good never stop doing good. Whatever happens, you can’t completely stamp out kindness or good works. They gather strength, too.

I hate hearing decent people’s defeatism. I like focusing on stories like today’s, stories of people trying to make the world a little better wherever they are.

Zofeen T Ebrahim writes at the Guardian, “Pedaling down a narrow alleyway in Karachi’s crowded Lyari Town, Saira Bano slows as she passes a group of children sitting on the ground, listening to a man reading aloud from a book. The eight-year-old gets off her bike, slips off her sandals, and sits on the mat at the back.

“She has already heard the story from Mohammad Noman, who is entertaining more than a dozen children with the tale of Noori, an insecure yellow parrot. ‘I don’t mind listening to it again,’ says Saira. ‘He’s so funny.’

“Noman, 23, is spending two weeks in Lyari pedaling an old ice-cream cart through its lanes, stopping to read his stories and leaving behind books for the children to borrow. He dropped out of school himself as a teenager but has returned to education and is now studying for his high school certificate.

“He is also one of two storytellers working part-time for the Kahaani Sawaari (Stories on Wheels) program, run by GoRead.pk, which is working to improve literacy among underprivileged communities in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

“ ‘I become a kid when I am around the children,’ says Noman. In the past 18 months, he has visited 30 areas of Lyari, one of the most densely populated and deprived neighborhoods of Karachi, with more than 660,000 residents, mostly from the marginalised Baloch ethnic group.

“ ‘I have learned so much,’ says Noman. ‘It has brought a change in me as well. I’ve become more tolerant of people and developed patience. I think I have a certain rapport with children and they listen.’ …

“Education is free and compulsory in Pakistan yet, according to the UN, it has the world’s second-highest rate of children absent from school, at 44% of five to 16-year-olds. And 77% of 10-year-olds are unable to understand simple text, according to the World Bank. Books and uniforms can be prohibitively expensive in Pakistan. Saira dropped out of school a year ago when her father, who worked in a toy shop, lost his job as Pakistan’s economy was hit by rocketing food and fuel prices. …

“Erum Kazi, GoRead’s program director, says parents have told her how their children have developed a love for reading since the scheme began. …

“Nusser Sayeed, GoRead’s director [and] a former teacher, was inspired to set up the program after seeing ‘very little joy in the lives of children studying in schools in underprivileged neighborhoods.’ Children were growing up without anyone reading them stories, she says, adding: ‘We cannot expect children to read if we don’t read to them first.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. And in a related Guardian story, read about how a camel delivered books to poor children in Pakistan when Covid closed schools, here.

Read Full Post »

School Bus Driver Helping Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 9, 2023| 11 Comments »

Photo: Alex Bakley via Washington Post and Italy 24.
Herman Cruse is a school bus driver who is a regular volunteer in classes at Middle Township Elementary No. 1 in Cape May Court House, N.J.

I like that every week the Washington Post sends subscribers a collection of upbeat stories it calls “The Optimist.” It’s good to be reminded that there are people doing kind and generous things every day. We just don’t hear about them often.

Today’s story, by Cathy Free. is about a school bus driver who was concerned when a child on his bus was discouraged about reading. It’s about how his decision to help out led to a whole new avocation.

“New Jersey school bus driver Herman Cruse noticed that a kindergartner seemed a little sad and out of sorts during one morning ride to Middle Township Elementary #1.

“ ‘Bus drivers are the eyes and ears of students when they’re away from home,’ said Cruse, 55, who drives students of all ages for Middle Township Public Schools in Cape May Court House, N.J.

“ ‘We have an uncanny gift to discern what kids are feeling,’ he said.

“When Cruse asked the kindergartner what was wrong, he said the boy explained that he wasn’t able to complete his reading assignment because his parents were busy with his four siblings at home. It was hard to find one-on-one time to practice reading with his mom or dad, he told Cruse.

“Cruse said an idea popped into his mind.

‘I told him, “Listen, I have some free time, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to come to the school and read with you,” ‘ he said.

“Cruse received permission from the 6-year-old’s teacher, Alex Bakley, to show up at her kindergarten classroom the following week. When he walked in, he said the boy shouted, ‘Hey, that’s my bus driver!’

“ ‘We went into a quiet corner and began reading together,’ Cruse said. … ‘So he read to me, I read to him and we read together, and from there, it took on a life of its own. … A second student wanted to read to me, then a third. All these kids were going to the teacher asking, “Can I read with Mr. Herman?” ‘

“Almost two years later, Cruse now volunteers to help Bakley’s 18 kindergarten students and another kindergarten class with reading two days a week, and on a third day, he tutors the school’s first- and second-graders. After dropping the kids off at school, of course. …

“Middle Township Elementary Principal Christian Paskalides said every child at the school looks up to Cruse, both on and off the school bus. … ‘Positive adult interactions can sometimes dictate a child’s day, and a bus driver is the first and last adult interaction for most students other than family,’ Paskalides added. ‘This is more than just a job to Herman — he’s a great role model and mentor.’

“Cruse said he’s never wanted to be anything other than a bus driver. … Because he lives in Egg Harbor City, N.J., about 40 miles away, it didn’t make sense for him to drive home after delivering students to high school, middle school and elementary school, he said. … ‘Instead, I’d hang out at the gym, go the library or sit in my car and go to sleep to fill up the time,’ Cruse said.

“It wasn’t until he offered to help the kindergartner on his bus last year that he realized there was something more rewarding he could be doing, he said. Cruse had spent a lot of time reading to his own five children when they were growing up.

“ ‘They’d say, “Dad, how come you read so much?” and I’d say, “Come on over and find out,” ‘ he said. ‘I’d tell them, “The book is always better than the movie.” There’s nothing better than time spent with a good book.’ …

“When Bakley showed him the round table where children would read to him in her classroom, he pulled up a small chair and made himself at home, he said. … He spends about 20 minutes reading books with each child on a rotating basis, and he also challenges them to word games like alphabet bingo.

“LaCotia Ruiz said her son Kingsly, 5, is more excited about books since he started reading with Cruse.

“ ‘Kingsly had a rough time with reading at the beginning of the school year, but he’s doing much better because of this fun one-on-one time,’ Ruiz said. ‘In the morning he wakes up excited and says, “I’m going to read with Mr. Herman!” ‘ she said. …

“ ‘There’s now another bus driver who wants to help me out between his routes,’ [Cruse] said. “What started out as a way to kill time has now blossomed into a way to make a difference in the heart of a child.’ ”

Props to him and props to that first kindergartner, too. I’m going out on a limb here and opine that the little boy sensed he could reveal his problem to this adult and maybe have something good happen. More at the Post, here.

Read Full Post »

Gotta Love Icelanders

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 26, 2022| 7 Comments »

Photo: PenguinRandomHouse.
In Iceland, Christmas Eve signals the long-awaited “book flood,” Jólabókaflóð. Icelanders love to read. And the prime minister writes books herself.

Up at a Vermont ski lodge as Christmas approached, Suzanne’s family experienced the power outage from the latest winter storm. What is there to do in darkness but read a book by candlelight — or at least by headlamp? They did.

In Iceland, where winters are especially dark, Icelanders love to read.

David Mouriquand reports, “Euronews Culture was recently in Reykjavík for the European Film Awards, and while in the city, we sat down with Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, one of only eight women in power in Europe. 

“She made her mark on the global cultural map this year when she published her first thriller novel, entitled Reykjavík, which she co-wrote with best-selling author of the ‘Dark Iceland’ series Ragnar Jónasson.

“Jakobsdóttir, former minister of education, science and culture, is the chairperson of the Left-Green movement and has been serving as the prime minister since 2017. …

“I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that you published a novel this year, a crime novel. It’s not the first time that this has happened in Iceland, as one of your predecessors, Davíð Oddsson, published a novel when he was in office. What is it about writing and the crime / noir genre that appeals to you?

“I used to study crime fiction. I studied Icelandic literature and crime fiction was my main topic, so I have always enjoyed crime. In fiction, not in reality! And I actually was writing my master’s thesis when the Icelandic crime novel was flourishing and becoming rather big. It has become even bigger in the last decade or so. And it has been a longstanding dream to write a novel of my own, but I definitely would not have done it if I didn’t have this co-author (Ragnar Jónasson), who pushed me and said: ‘We have to do this together!’

“I must admit that I really enjoyed writing it, and I think that even us politicians can be creative. I think it’s very good for us, because sometimes we are not very creative in our politics! And it’s because the writing time was during the time of the pandemic, when I was totally absorbed in the virus and was getting, let’s say, obsessed with the virus and its effects and what we were doing.

“So having this kind of pet project to think about sometimes late in the evening or when I had an hour or two actually saved my mental health during the pandemic.

“The more I thought about you writing your novel, the more I thought: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if world leaders took the time to embrace a creative outlet? So, tap dancing for Biden, or oil painting for Macron… Terrible ideas, granted, but as you say, it’s very good for politicians to get creative…

“I definitely think that the world would be a better place! Not just politicians, but all of us. I don’t think we all do major works of art, but I think it’s a very healthy thing to really grow and nurture that creative strength that I think we all have. I don’t think we do enough of it. So, yes definitely, the world would be a better place.” More at EuroNewsCulture, here.

Sara Miller Llana at the Christian Science Monitor stresses that Iceland as a whole is a book-loving country: “Hördur Gudmundsson spends the better part of his day with a book in his hands – but only in winter.

“As the skies darken, he will spend full mornings at his favorite bookstore, IÐA Zimsen, near the Icelandic capital’s harbor. After supper he’ll turn to his hobby: bookbinding. He’s already bound all the works of Iceland’s most famous author, Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, and now is deep into the works of Gunnar Gunnarsson.

“By Icelandic standards, this doesn’t make him a fringe book buff. Iceland is known as one of the world’s most literary countries, when it comes to the love of both reading and writing. 

‘It must be in our mother’s milk,’ says Mr. Gudmundsson, a retired trades teacher.

“Books in Reykjavík, the first nonnative English-speaking city to be designated a UNESCO City of Literature, are everywhere. At one breakfast spot, the counter serves as a giant bookshelf. Tomes are piled onto the sills of steamed-up cafe windows.

“The streets of Reykjavík are an ode to the characters of the medieval sagas. Written in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Icelandic sagas retell the exploits of Norse settlers beginning in the ninth century. The works are a source of pride and a pillar of Iceland’s literary sensibilities. Tours in Iceland’s only city take visitors to the birthplaces of authors like Mr. Laxness and the scenes of plot twists in Nordic noir, a booming genre.” More here.

The WordPress site Jólabókaflóð.org posted the “founding story,” here.

And if you search on the word “Jólabókaflóð,” you will find lots of other fun articles.

Read Full Post »

Read Books, Get Out of Jail

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Reuters.
An inmate reads the Bible in prison, where she and fellow inmates have access to a small library as part of a La Paz, Bolivia, program to spread literacy and offer the chance to get out of jail earlier.

Sharing stories like today’s, I can see why someone could accuse me of being a Pollyanna. But it’s not that I think people convicted of crimes will be completely transformed if shown a little kindness. It’s more that I see no harm in testing how small kindnesses might add up, especially for people who may have experienced few kindnesses.

In 2017, Philip Reeves at National Public Radio conducted an interview in a Brazil prison about a program that Bolivia is now testing.

“Brazil’s prisons are dangerous places,” Reeves, noted, “blighted by overcrowding and drug gangs. But literacy is offering a way to shorten some inmates’ sentences: Read books, reduce your time behind bars. …

“REEVES: About 30 men are sitting behind desks in a classroom. They’re writing with pens and paper. The teacher is standing up front issuing instructions. … We could be in any school anywhere but for a couple of details. One, a wall of iron bars separates the teacher from her class. Two, the paper each man’s writing could win him a little bit of his life back. … These are inmates in a giant penitentiary in southern Brazil called the Casa de Custodia de Piraquara. …

“MARILDA DE PAULA SOARES: (Through interpreter) I am an educator. I really believe people can change.

“REEVES: Marilda de Paula Soares is the class teacher. Her students are participating in a project pioneered by the southern Brazilian state of Parana. Prisoners get four days lopped off their sentences for each book they read. To get those days of freedom, they must write a short paper about the book. They’re doing that now. Soares says each prisoner’s paper must explain …

“SOARES: (Through interpreter) … what’s caught their eye, a specific character, the language, the theme …

“REEVES: … in sufficient detail to ensure that cheating is … impossible. Douglas Seixas, an inmate here, says it’s true. You really can’t skip the reading. …

“SEIXAS: Because we need to read a book to understand. If you not read the book, no, no way.

“REEVES: Only certain books qualify under the reading program, including foreign and Brazilian classics and kids’ books for prisoners learning to read. Books with very violent themes are banned. … There’s a maximum of 12 books a year. That adds up to a month and a half remission. Admilson Rodrigues is doing 10 years for drug trafficking but is steadily whittling down his sentence by reading. … Rodrigues said he loved Gone With The Wind and also Les Miserables. Les Miserables seems particularly popular here. Rodrigues believes that’s because it’s about an ex-con who’s trying to create a new life on the outside. …

“REEVES: Is this project window dressing by Brazilian officials? Are they trying to put a gloss on a dysfunctional penal system where inmates sometimes wait years before being tried? It’s hard to know. Yet, prisoners here do seem to be benefiting. Edson Reinehr says he’s on his fourth book, which is about the adventures of Mowgli the wolf boy.

“EDSON REINEHR: Helps a lot because to keep the mind — occupied mind inside the cell instead of thinking about other bad things.

“REEVES: Staff here say the project’s about much more than just helping prisoners pass the time and get a little remission. Teacher Agda Ultchak says it’s about fundamentally changing lives.

“AGDA ULTCHAK: (Through interpreter) We hope to create a new perspective on life for them. This is about acquiring knowledge and culture and being able to join another universe.”

Meanwhile, at Reuters, Monica Machicao reports on a version of the program that was launched recently in Bolivia.

“The state program ‘Books Behind Bars’ offers detainees a chance get out of jail days or weeks in advance of their release date.

Bolivia does not have a life sentence or death penalty, but pre-trial detention can last for many years due to a slow judicial system.

“The program has been launched in 47 prisons that do not have resources to pay for education, reintegration or social assistance programs for prisoners, the Andean country’s Ombudsman’s Office says.

“So far, 865 inmates are sifting through prose, improving their reading and writing skills. One of them is Jaqueline, who has already read eight books in a year and has passed four reading tests.

” ‘It is really hard for people like us who have no income and who do not have family outside,’ she said. ‘There are people here, for example, who are just learning how to read and write.’ …

“With a daily salary of 8 bolivianos ($1.18), incarcerated Bolivians are forced to work to be able to eat and pay the high court costs to be released. The country’s prisons and jails have long suffered from overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with some detainees staging protests over the lack of health care, according to Human Rights Watch. …

“Said Mildred, an inmate at the Obrajes women’s prison in the highland city of La Paz, ‘When I read, I am in contact with the whole universe. The walls and bars disappear.’ “

More on Brazil’s program at NPR, here, and on Bolivia’s at Reuters, here.

Read Full Post »

Little Free Diverse Libraries

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 30, 2021| 4 Comments »

By Golly, it pays to read the alum magazine. The people I knew at grad school are no longer posting their achievements, but younger people are doing plenty of creative and interesting things! Consider a 2017 Syracuse University grad who launched a national campaign not far from where I live.

Brandon Dyer wrote about her initiative at Syracuse University Magazine. “When in-person instruction at her school was canceled for the rest of the year because of the pandemic, school guidance counselor Sarah Kamya ’17 decided to work from her hometown of Arlington, Massachusetts. Unlike her New York City apartment, her home in Arlington had enough room to accommodate a makeshift office.

“After her online workday was over, Kamya often tried to spend time outside. ‘I would go on a lot of walks every day, and I passed a few Little Libraries in my neighborhood,’ she says. The Little Free Libraries are part of a national network of outdoor, weatherproof, publicly accessible bookshelves that serve as a free book exchange in many communities. ‘I found that they were a great place to get or share books,’ Kamya says. …

“As an undergraduate majoring in child and family studies [at Syracuse’s] Falk College, Kamya had interned at a local middle school. Although she enjoyed her hands-on experience, it underscored the fact that people of color are still underrepresented in materials used to support the curriculum — an observation Kamya recalled from her own childhood as a book lover who rarely saw herself represented. …

“For the past year, Kamya has been working at Manhattan’s Public School 191, the Riverside School for Makers and Artists, where she has seen how important an inclusive curriculum is to the students, who are predominately people of color. …

“In the Little Free Libraries near her home office, Kamya saw an opportunity to enlighten her community. She began by placing books that offered full, relatable portrayals of Black characters. ‘It was a light bulb, and it just worked out with the timing of being home, the timing of the protests going on. … Why not take this opportunity to really spread awareness and open up people’s eyes to things that they hadn’t seen before?’

“Kamya says these books can potentially enhance awareness, providing access to literature that is new to many families and giving all children an opportunity to read stories that feature Black excellence. She believes books have the power to create change. ‘That change may be within ourselves or spread to others.’ She calls her project Little Free Diverse Libraries.

“To finance books, she started with a request on social media. She asked her family and friends to make a donation and promised all proceeds would be spent at Black-owned bookstores. This idea resonated with people, and she raised $10,000. Then, New York City author Eva Chen amplified Kamya’s message to her own 1.4 million followers and suggested a way to streamline the donation process. …

“ ‘People are really supportive of this project and have been helping me expand this further than I ever imagined.’

“To date, 28 different states have received or will be receiving books from Kamya’s collection. She filled 15 Little Libraries in her hometown of Arlington, and volunteers in Austin, Texas, filled five. Three Little Libraries in Los Angeles have received books like Undefeated, written by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and Hair Love, written by Matthew Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. Other examples include Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? …

“During her summer vacation, Kamya is spending a lot of time in her dining room processing the piles of books. She’s enlisted friends and her parents, calling the project a team effort. ‘I had to make my mom relocate her home office, but it’s okay,’ she says. When donations arrive, Kamya spends at least an hour unboxing everything. Each book is outfitted with individual stickers that say: ‘Black stories matter. This book was chosen with love by anti-racist educators. Please treat it with care and return it to the Little Free Library so that others can enjoy it.’

“Although her project is time consuming, the potential benefits for people of color inspire Kamya.

‘My hope is that these younger people and students will really feel motivated. Hopefully students of color can see themselves represented and go out there and make change.’ …

“Kamya’s goal is for these books to be accessible to all people and to inspire conversations. ‘I want the books to keep replenishing themselves. I want Black authors to keep writing books, and for characters that are minorities to be represented.’ ” More.

The original Little Free Library team also interviewed Kamya, asking, for example:

“What advice do you have for Little Free Library stewards who want to share diverse books in their libraries?
“My advice for Little Free Library stewards is to reach out to those in the community. When I started this project, I had people reach out to me saying they were a teacher or a parent, and they had some books they would like to donate, or their kid had outgrown the books and they were happy to drop off these books so the next person could have them. Sometimes people don’t even know what they have until they take a closer look at their collection!  I would also suggest thinking about your own community, who is represented, who is not represented and what books can you add to your library to welcome or educate those within the community. …

“Can Little Free Library stewards apply to receive books from you?
“I am continuing to send books, as long as I have the books and the funds. If stewards would like to receive books they can reach out to me via email, through the [Little Free Library stewards’ private] Facebook group, or on Instagram.

“What are your top 10 favorite diverse children’s books?
“1. Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO by Dr. Tamara Pizzoli
“2. I Am Enough by Grace Beyers
“3. Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
“4. Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
“5.The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander
“6. Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
“7. The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad
“8. The Day you Begin by Jacqueline Woodson
“9. Hair Love by Matthew Cherry
“10. Of Thee I Sing by Barack Obama”

More at the Little Free Library site, here. For a podcast by Kamya, click at Syracuse University Magazine. And check out the Little Free Diverse Libraries Instagram profile.

Read Full Post »

The New Book Clubs in Afghanistan

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 21, 2019| 3 Comments »

Photo: The Guardian
Mashed Mahjor says she started Book Cottage in Afghanistan because there children don’t have a lot of opportunities to talk freely and ask questions.

Today’s post is another in a series about what books mean to people. At least since the age of 10, I myself have found that getting lost in a book is about the most consistently comforting thing I do, and it seems that many other people feel the same.

Stefanie Glinski writes for the Guardian, “In a dimly lit room in west Kabul, stacked with shelves full of books, a small crowd gathers around the warmth of a gas heater. Books clamped under their arms, they are eager to share the stories they’ve read over the course of the week.

“Members of Afghanistan’s youngest reading club, the Book Cottage, range in age from four to 13. The club is just one of many reading circles that are springing up across the capital and reviving a book culture that, once lost, is now vibrant, liberal and expanding once again.

” ‘You have to start them young,’ explains the initiative’s founder, 25-year-old Mashed Mahjor. ‘The country is still at war, so children don’t have a lot of opportunities to talk freely and ask questions, especially girls. We have to bring our book culture back to life.’

“After starting the reading club six years ago, she now has up to 20 regular members – and hundreds of book donations from all over the world.

“But trends are shifting. In west Kabul, a neighbourhood with laid-back coffee shops, small startup businesses, a quick-growing dating scene and – at its heart – Kabul University, reading circles for all ages are expanding. They have started to provide a platform for Afghans to discuss, in a mixed-gender environment, issues not on the public agenda of a conservative society. …

“One such space is found in a basement room of one of the city’s universities, where a group of up to 20 book lovers meets weekly. Some travel the length of the city to participate.

“ ‘It’s worth it,’ says Attash Mashal, a civil engineer and government employee. ‘Most of the books we read can’t be accessed in Afghanistan, so we search for them online and print out copies. We read novels, poetry and philosophy.

“ ‘This one is censored though,’ he adds, holding a copy of Albert Camus’ The Fall. ‘We just found out.’ …

“It’s the translations that most people are after, as it can be difficult to read books in English or other languages. At Aksos, the city’s biggest and most diverse book store, people squeeze into the tight space, examining new titles, reading in corners, or taking selfies against a backdrop of bookshelves. Books are the new cool.

“Aksos holds anything from The Kite Runner – another book previously banned in the country – to The Daydreams of Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president.

“ ‘Once again, the city is boasting poets, writers and creatives pushing against the recent norm,’ says [Syeda Quratulain Masood, who has been researching Kabul’s book culture for her PhD at Brown University in the US].

“ ‘I think it’s because in book clubs, or when writing poetry, we can share our ideas and beliefs without restrictions,’ says Yalda Heideri, a student in her twenties who attends a university book club.

“ ‘Afghanistan has restricted us a lot, especially us women, so we found a way to have discussions that would be embarrassing or even impossible outside.’ But for Heideri, literature has also become an escape from daily life in a wartorn country where there were 3,804 civilian deaths last year, according to the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan.

‘When I get tired of it all, I escape into poetry. It’s a whole different world.

” ‘Kabul is improving and becoming more open, which makes me hopeful. But regardless of where peace negotiations are going, we have to find our own way to cope, and books are just that for me.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »