My Librarian Is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World
by Margriet Ruurs
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Book Summary Information
Author: Margriet RuursEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-15
ISBN: 1590780930
Number of pages: 32
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Book Reviews of My Librarian Is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World
Book Review: Have books, will travel
Summary: 4 Stars
"Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." The postman's creed, you say? Yes, but now it applies to a new group of people: mobile librarians.
Margriet Ruurs, writer and educator, read a newspaper article describing the mobile library in the desert areas of Kenya. She began to wonder if children in other remote areas receive books. Thus began the scrapbook of mobile libraries from all over the world. After Ruur made the contact, librarians shared stories and photographs of their unique mode of book delivery. Ruur includes a total of thirteen mobile libraries. Each shows a two-page spread containing a map insert of the country's location, a box about the area, and the story and photographs of each mobile library in action.
Because there are thousands of islands in Finland's geography, the library goes to the children by boat. In the northern Lapland region of the Artic, a book bus serves Lapp children in Finland, Sweden, and Norway.
In Mongolia a book minivan and a horse-drawn wagon take books to the herders' children in the Gobi desert. In Azerbaijan a blue truck serves refugee settlements. The children love their "library-in-a-truck." In fact, the librarian wrote: Because these children have nothing, not even school, "the mobile library is as important as air or water."
Loaded with crates of books, elephants are library assistants in taking books to children in northern Thailand. Homeless children in Bangkok have access to a classroom and library in old, transformed train carriages in stations around the city.
The most dedicated delivery of books occurs in Papua New Guinea, where trucks with four-wheel-drives go as far as they can. Then the librarians tote boxes of books on their shoulders for four hours. As they come to each village, they drop off books and medical supplies. In a few weeks they will repeat the process.
Ruur leaves a few questions unanswered. Who funds these libraries? Who funds these books, as surely all are not returned. She mentions one foundation in Mongolia, where there is almost no illiteracy! Other readers may be curious and want to participate.
Ruur makes clear the importance of the mobile library. What matters is that children are being served where they are. This is a very fine book about dedication at its best and and a promotion of the love of reading in the most unlikely places. Every school library in the United States should buy this book and every librarian should share it with her students, if only to show that children everywhere love books!
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