It's an exciting moment when a new book comes out.

As a writer you spend hours and days, months and years working on your book, hoping that you're telling the story well, hoping that once you've told it, others will care to read it, and hoping, even more, that when they read it, they will like it. Actually, you hope they will love it, they way you loved those first stories in which you could lose yourself, whether it was Jim Hawkins trying to outwit Long John Siliver in Treasure Island or Harry Potter enduring Professor Snape's withering attention or Wilbur the pig discovering the magic of writing and the power offriendship in Charlotte's Web.

But as my first novel, We Are Not Eaten By Yaks, comes out, I can't help but think of the 774 million people around the world who cannot read or write and who can't yet experience that private moment between a reader and book, when the world outside melts away and you are there with Jim or with Harry having exciting and wonderful adventures, or with that good and friendly spider, Charlotte, learning what it means to love someone so unlike yourself. I wish everyone could experience that magic. On March 9th, World Read Aloud Day is one step toward giving everyone that chance. People all over the world will share the power of stories with each other. You can too.
 

There are so many troubles in the world that it can seem silly to talk about storytelling. There are wars and hunger and poverty and diseases. There are too many injustices to count.

But then I think about Congolese orphan I met in Tanzania almost ten years ago. He's a young man now, and his country is still reeling from over a decade of civil war. When we first met, he was 12 years old and he loved to read. He didn't have much else going for him...he wasn't terribly popular with his schoolmates; he had no parents to look after him; he had no good opportunities for the future, even if he could figure out how to stay in school. He drew sad pictures of himself, dead and buried, imagining escape from the pressures of his young life. There wasn't much I could do for him. I was leaving within days. I gave him a copy of The Little Prince in French and English so he could practice and so he could read a little about another child on his own, having adventures, fighting away sadness, exploring.

I gave him the book because he loved to read. I gave him the book because he lived in a world filled with too little kindness. I gave him the book knowing that it would change nothing about harsh reality of the life he was living.

But I stayed in touch with him over the years and learned that he had held onto that book through countless moves and changes, and that he had started a kind of support group for other orphans. He would read the book aloud to them and they would take turns reading it and dream together about life beyond the dusty confines of that sprawling camp, just like the Little Prince dreamed of life on other stars. I was able to send him some other books from time to time, and those too became treasures in the struggling little network of eager readers my young friend was building. I learned that just a few years ago, he passed his national exams in the Congo with flying colors. He continues to lead a youth support group for orphans. He is trying, against the odds, to dream bigger than his circumstances allow. He doesn't think about himself dead and buried anymore. Things are hard, but he is trying.

While there are a lot factors that helped him to survive all those years of deprivation when so many others could not--trusted adults, help from charities and religious groups, financial assistance, and luck--I strongly believe that reading and his ability to forge a community around himself through the power of story made som of those things possible. Through books he found hope. Through books he found strength. Through books he found connection to community when the world around him was falling apart.

I believe that literacy can do that for everyone. A book is vehicle for possibilities. It creates an private space between the reader and the word; it can spread essential knowledge and skills across time and distance, and it can spark a shared experience, like it did for this young man and other orphans who gathered around him to hear about the Little Prince in exile, traveling the universe.

While a book can't bring peace and prosperity to the entire world or solve hunger and poverty, I think it can start a child on the path to lead her community into the 21st century with hope and resilience. I'd like the share that possibility with everyone from Iowa to Liberia, from Harlem to Iraq. I bet we can do it. I bet we can do it together. 

On March 9th (and every day!) take some time to share a story with someone you care about.