I spent an hour last night putting together the post for Guys Lit Wire on the Book Fair for Boys. All of the information is posted over there - how to access the Powells wish list, why we think buying books for boys in the LA County juvenile justice prison system is important and why we are asking for everyone to help. All of that is true and I hope that we do well - I hope that we hit a huge dent in the wish list (which has 125 books listed) and the books get down to LA and InsideOut Writers (who we are partnering with) is able to impress on the boys that they do matter and that books matter and that, most importantly, reading books can show you a whole other world.
That's what I've been thinking about a lot - how books are the windows to worlds that these boys probably can not imagine. I remember the first book that showed me another place, (A Wrinkle in Time), and the chance to introduce that same wonder to someone else is a large part of what has propelled me in this project and what has me so excited now. It's such a simple thing really - go to Powells, order a book, type in the address (which we have up at the post) and off it goes to build a library. And the kids who read it realize that they are visible - that they have been noticed.
Maybe it reminds just one or two who have their doubts that they have mattered all along.
When I was in high school some of the boys I'd been in class with since we were little kids started getting into trouble and doing time in Titusville - the county juvenile hall. They came back angrier, tougher, less and less like the boys I knew. And then one after another they just stopped coming back. I remember that most clearly; by the time I was a senior in high school none of them were in class any longer. I still remember their names even now though and maybe if - if only - well, maybe if someone had done something then they would not have gotten so lost on their way back.
A book is a small thing, a really cheap thing in the grand scheme of it all. But I was young then and I didn't know, not really, what a book could do. Now I do. So now I try harder.
May 13
2009
01:54 PM
I just wanted to let you know that I posted an entry about the book fair on my site. (I also purchased a book by Bradbury--one of my favorite authors.) I just wanted to let you know that I remembered.