Beloved author champions the importance of reading and literacy in the lives of America’s youth

Katherine Paterson knows first-hand that books have the power to change lives. So it is only natural that she chose the theme “Read for your life” as the platform for her role as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

The acclaimed author of 39 books that have garnered countless awards, including two Newbery Medals (Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved) and two National Book Awards (The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Master Puppeteer), Paterson was named to the position in January of this year by U.S. Librarian of Congress James Billington. She is only the second person to hold this new post, succeeding author Jon Scieszka.

The position is a perfect fit for this tireless advocate of the importance of literature and literacy to the development of responsible citizens in a democracy a cause that she champions not only through her books, but also in other roles. She is vice president of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance and a lifelong member of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY), the U.S. affiliate.

Promoting a platform for life

When asked how she selected the platform for her two-year term as ambassador, Paterson harkened back a decade to her involvement with a project launched by Banco del Libro (the Book Bank), IBBY’s Venezuelan chapter, after floods and landslides ravaged the country’s coastline towns and communities in 1999.

The group brought books and storytellers to children and youth in shelters that housed families who had lost their homes to mud slides. In the midst of horrific trauma, these stories and tales enabled the children and all the villagers to connect with life beyond the terror of their immediate environment and find hope for the future.

The program was called “Leer para Vivir—Read to Live.”

Meanwhile, in recognition of Paterson’s winning the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1998, USBBY had collected a generous purse and asked her to designate the funds to an organization that promoted books and reading. She chose Leer para Vivir, thus enabling key financial support for the program to carry on its work.

She went to Vargas, the area most affected by the disaster, in the summer of 2000, and observed the program firsthand. “They would announce ahead of time that ‘the storytellers are coming!’ and people would come from all over,” she recalls. “Many of these people were not literate and had never had books before.”

Leer para Vivir went on to become a pilot throughout Venezuela and was adopted by the Venezuelan government. It has served as a model  for other countries, including Thailand after the tsunami in 2004.

A decade after her visit, when Paterson was asked for her platform as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, “I had a dream about my friends in Venezuela,” she said. And so she adopted a variation on that powerful theme as her platform.

Reaching a wider audience

One aspect Paterson most relishes about the ambassador position is that it enables her to spread the word about literacy, reading, and books to a wider audience. Among these audiences are the adult literacy students of Central Vermont Adult Basic Education (CVABE) in her home state. Earlier in the year, the group participated in Vermont Reads 2010, joining thousands of readers across the state who are exploring Day of the Pelican, Paterson’s 2009 book about a family of Albanian refugees in the 1990s.

In mid-May, the Aldrich Public Library in Barre hosted a Katherine Paterson Day. She joined a hugely diverse audience that included elected officials, CVABE students, local residents, a Bosnian dance troupe, refugees from Bosnia, and a producer of a film that depicts life in a refugee camp on the Kosovo–Macedonia border.

“These are people who ordinarily wouldn’t be talking to a children’s writer,” notes Paterson. The Aldrich Library event was just one of many author appearances that will take her all over the country to address other diverse audiences on the power of books and stories.

Motivating reluctant readers

Of course, the audience that Paterson most wants to reach is America’s youth—the very kids for whom she writes her books. She laments that the current education system in the U.S., with its emphasis on testing, doesn’t help more young people understand what reading can do for them. “Standard-ized tests don’t inspire kids to think or become a better person,” she says. “Life doesn’t consist of multiple-choice answers.”

Paterson observes that children seem to lose interest in books around fourth grade, about the time parents stop reading aloud to their kids. Yet read-ing aloud does more than simply help teach an emergent reader. It creates a physical and emotional bond between parents and children, and provides a shared language and experience that a family can turn to repeatedly.

In the classroom, reading aloud can unite students, whether they are age 6 or 16. Over the years, Paterson has heard from many teachers who said they read The Bridge to Terabithia to their students “and they all cried together.”

Paterson offers teachers these suggestions to help motivate young people to read:

• Never stop reading to your students.
• Share your love—let them see that you love reading.
• Read what you love—not what you think you should read.
• Have students read books they’ll like.
• Give students permission not to finish a book if they don’t like it.
• Tell them it’s okay to read books they won’t be tested on.

Most important, help them to understand the importance of reading to their lives. Paterson said it best when she turned to the young people in the audience during the January ceremony commemorating the passing of the ambassador’s baton from Scieszka: “Read for your life…as a member of a family, as a part of a community, as a citizen of this country, and as a citizen of the world.”

Katherine Paterson: An ambassador for life. (October 2010). Reading Today, 28(2), 28.