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I know I've posted about the site Letters of Note before. Each day they post a new letter, and reading it has quickly become my favorite part of the day. Today's letter came courtesy of a Scottish poet, Robert Burns, in response to a critical review of one of his poems. It really just made me laugh, and I had to share with you. The site is definitely something that everyone needs to check out.

Ellisland, 1791

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

R.B.

Over the weekend, I watched Redemption: The Stan Tookie Story.
The movie starred Jamie Foxx, who played Stan Tookie Williams, one of the founding members of the Crips gang. The movie takes place after he has been imprisoned and is waiting on Death Row for crimes he committed as a gang member. Throughout the film, there are flashbacks to Williams' life of crime. While waiting to be executed, Williams claims to be a changed man, renounces his gang membership and even starts writing books (including children's books) warning against the dangers of gang life. He co-writes the books with a friend, Barbara Becnel, who also advocates for clemency from the state of California on Williams' behalf. Although there were many people who did not by into William's claims of reform, many people supported him. There is a seen in the film where Winnie Mandela comes to visit him in prison. In fact, Williams was even suggested as a Nobel Peace Prize winner several times for his anti-gang stance and work. At the time the film was made, Williams was still in prison, working on appeals and clemency pleas. They were never granted, however, and in 2005, he was executed by lethal injection. (The conclusion of this story is brought to you thanks to Wikipedia.)

It's a very interesting movie that brings up a lot of questions about whether someone can really reform after a life of crime and  whether the death penalty is just. Even though they are not really related, the whole idea of Williams reaching out to children through books to help them make better of their lives reminded me of FAVL and our mission here. I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone.

A cute little video for your viewing pleasure.

After writing her popular "Aya de Yopougon" series, Abouet had a tough act to follow. Despite my initial prejudices, I still enjoyed reading "Bienvenue, tome 1." But the two just don't compare, with Aya without a doubt remaining #1.

Asides from a similar drawing style, I saw nothing similar between the characters of Aya and Bienvenue. I guess this should be considered an accomplishment for the author, but unfortunately is just disappointing to the reader. Everyone wishes they had a friend like Aya but Bienvenue is not the most personable girl. 

Bienvenue is a 21 year old art student at Ecole des beaux arts, in Paris. She lives with her cousin and makes money through random jobs including babysitting and waitressing at parties. Throughout the book, Bienvenue struggles with her identity. She hates her first name, fights constantly with her mother, does not feel like an accomplished artists, questions life constantly...in other words she's a typical young adult. She is smart and sassy, but her sassiness just comes across as annoying. She's independent, always doing her own thing and doesn't seem to want anyone to get too close or in her way. The book is also quite sexual compared to Abouet's previous works, with what seems like every other page discussing sex.

Wasn't a big fan of the ending. With all of Bienvenue's sassiness and complete indifference to all the sex talk, does the book really have to end with her in love with a boy? I did breathe a sigh of relief though that Abouet didn't put any of the cultural/vocab/recipes in the back pages. (What the heck would she put anyways, "How to wear a beret", "How to smoke like a true Parisian", the historical background of where "Oh la la" came from??)

I don't really see "Bienvenue" every becoming as popular as "Aya," however I do still think this is a book that many young Parisians (and others) will enjoy, and I am curious to see how the rest of the story unfolds.

While this has nothing to do with libraries, I came across this website, Letters of Note, and more specifically this letter, and thought it was really sweet. It's a response from John Steinbeck (yes, the John Steinbeck of Grapes of Wrath) to his son about a girl with whom he has fallen in love. The website also includes a number of other letters to check out, but I really liked this one, so I'll share with you.

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First--if you are in love--that's a good thing--that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second--There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you--of kindness and consideration and respect--not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply--of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it--and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone--there is no possible harm in saying so--only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another--but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens--The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

One of the things I have not done enough of since moving to Ouaga is read. Volunteers spend a lot of time reading - since you may only be able to charge your computer a few times a month if you do not have electricity in your village, computer time is precious and not to be wasted. So your only real refuge when village life gets frustrating is in books. Living in the capital city, this is no longer the case. There are any number of distractions, and time to sit down and relax with a good book becomes scarce. Among my new year's resolutions for 2012 is to read more, while browsing around Oprah's website today I came across links to two challenges that would be perfect for meeting this goal.    


Challenge N° 1: The 50/50 Challenge                                                                                      

Read 50 books and watch 50 movies in the year. Any books, any movies. This translates to roughly 1 book and 1 movie per week.

Check out this blog post, where a bookworm realizes the importance of the movie half of the challenge.

There are different theme lists on the website, complete with ideas of titles if you'd like to focus you're reading efforts. Here's an example of a passport-themed list that one participant put together.

Challenge N°2: Around the World in 80 Books

This challenge officially started on October 1st, but it's not too late to get started.

The idea is to read books that take place in 80 different countries in the world. You have to hit each eight geographical regions of the world (North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania/Australia), and Antarctica is optional. The essential part is the setting of the book, not the nationality of the author, and if the book touches multiple countries, you can only count one of them.                                                                

I haven't decided which challenge I'm going to take up. I think I may go for option 1, though, since acquiring books from 80 different countries may be a bit hard to come by in Burkina, even in Ouaga.

Check them the reading challenges, curl up in your favorite spot and join in the fun! Along the way keep a journal to keep track of your reading experiences; invite friends to join you in the challenges and have regular get-togethers to talk about books; start a blog - make 2012 a year to expand your mind and challenge yourself! And look for regular updates here as I go get going on my reading journey.
                            

Came across the above on the Internet the other day (it's amazing what you can find when you are bored). It's a Bookcase Staircase, located in London. The owner had limited space in his attic apartment but wanted a library. This was the solution. I thought it was pretty original. Looks cool and, hey, you can get a little exercise while looking for Shakespeare. Or, if you are out of shape, midway up the stairs you can take a breather and read some Mark Twain.

You only have to read the title to get your first dose of shock. Age 10 and divorced? How does a 10 year old girl even get married off in the first place?

This is the story of Nujood, a young girl from an impoverished family in Yemen. Her father forces her to marry a man three times her age. As the father says, the family will be better off with one less mouth to feed. The husband agrees not to touch her until she reaches puberty, but the very first night he rapes Nujood. The rapes continue every night, she is beaten, forced to abandon school and is forbidden to play with other children in order to maintain the family's honor. 

Crying to her mother and father does nothing; they tell her to accept her role as new wife. With no one to stand up for her, Nujood decides to sneak out of the house to the courthouse and demand a divorce. After a highly publicized hearing, her divorce is granted, her story becoming well known across the world.

The book is straightforward, short and sweet; obviously written in a child's point of view.  There is not much historical background or any detailed look into the religious and cultural reasons behind forcing underage girls to marry men two or even three times their age. The book is definitely inspirational. I was amazed by Nujood's courage and her determination. When she grows up, she says that she wants to become a lawyer to help other young girls like herself. I hope she follows her dream. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Nujood in the next 25 years.

Recently we had a distribution of books in village for the LED project that took place earlier this year. Through the lottery, some kids received lamps while others received vouchers for books. The books were distributed to students by the librarians, teachers and Dounko; they were the Kathy Knowles color books in Jula. Each child received 4 color books and one Pain-Crocodile book. They were very excited to have them! Dounko brought many photos to Ouaga with him. Tomorrow I will post more of them, but today I just wanted to share my favorite photo. It is of Paul, a primary school student in Sara. I worked really closely with him during reading camp. At the beginning of the week, he could not even read the alphabet and was very shy. By the end of the week, he was able to sound out words and read simple sentences on his own. I was so proud of him during the final evaluation when he volunteered to read a paragraph aloud for all the students. He didn't make one error. Here is a picture of him smiling with his brand-new books!

The "Akissi" series is similar to "Aya de Yopougon," which Abouet also authored. Akissi, like Aya, is a young girl living in Yopougon, Ivory Coast.  Akissi, however, is about six years old, with the series targeting a much younger audience.
"Akissi: Attaque de chats" consists of seven mini stories.  The themes and storyline are quite childish, mostly revolving around Akissi fighting with her older brother Fofana. Despite her young age, Akissi is one tough little girl. She's adventurous, confident and stubborn. In one story she's determined to prove to her brother and his friends that she, a girl, can play soccer. In another story she comes home covered with bruises and a black eye after fighting to save her beloved pet, a monkey, from becoming a neighbor's dinner.

Even if it's supposed to target young people, I still found myself laughing out loud. I thought the title story was great. Akissi's mother asks her to bring a sack of fish to a family friend. When giving her directions, instead of giving her street names, they are more like: Go to the blue house, turn left, when you pass the woman selling fried donuts, keep straight. You'll see the tailor's store on the right..." Even in Burkina's capital of Ouaga, directions were pretty much explained in this exact way. Akissi of course gets lost, and reminded me of the countless times I found myself wandering the streets of Ouaga, trying to find the damn red door next to the woman selling peanuts.
The book also received thumbs up from Elisée. I caught him snickering out loud and when he was finished he said that he experienced many of the things mentioned in the book as a child growing up in the Ivory Coast. One story mentions two movies that Elisée says were incredibly popular when he was a kid and watched countless times. The book also mentions the word "Kokota", meaning when another kid hits you on top of your head with their knuckle, which he remembered suffering from quite often.

I have a feeling "Akissi" will be another hit in the library, and hopefully will bring in younger readers.