Tuesdays with Tiffany The Power of Books

Reading matters so much, some people go to extreme lengths to learn to read. Some people are willing to go out of their way to save books.

Your Assignment Summary of the StoryMy Reaction (Opinion, Connection, Thoughts) My Slide

Librarian of Basra Alia Muhammad Baker was the librarian in Basra, Iraq. She knew invaders would burn the books, so she decided to save them, even though she could get in serious trouble. Many townspeople helped her hide them, even though they were illiterate. They lifted them over a 7 foot wall and into a restaurant until she could take them to her home. She stacked books in every available spot in her house. One of the books was over 700 years old. She rescued 30,000 books days before the library was burned down during the Iraq Invasion in 2003.

Jack Gantos Jack wanted to make money quickly for college. He was offered ten thousand dollars to help sail a boat loaded with a ton of hashish. Jack got caught and was sent to prison. While in prison he made a goal of becoming a writer. He made a plan, and when he was released from prison, he started a whole new life.

Malcolm X His dad died when he was 6. His mom was put in a mental hospital when he was 10. They put all of his brothers and sisters in different foster homes. He dropped out of school and began selling drugs. At 19, he was sent to prison for 10 years. In prison, he taught himself to read by copying the dictionary and reading it out loud. “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”

President Eisenhower Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book. How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned, or it's not America.

Kirk Douglas My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was a slave, but taught himself to read. As a teenager, he taught other slaves to read. He often taught more than 40 slaves at a time, even though he was whipped for it. At 16 he was sold to a slave owner who was known for “breaking” slaves, but he couldn’t break Frederick. When Lincoln freed the salves, Frederick wrote a book about his life as a slave. "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

Whoopi Goldberg "When I was a kid they didn't call it dyslexia. They called it you know, you were slow, or you were retarded, or whatever. What you can never change is the effect that the words 'dumb' and 'stupid' have on young people. I knew I wasn't stupid, and I knew I wasn't dumb. My mother told me that. If you read to me, I could tell you everything that you read. They didn't know what it was. They knew I wasn't lazy, but what was it?"

Your Slide If I was to add a slide about your experiences and your life story with books, what would it say? How has reading impacted your life? How might it impact your future? How has it impacted the people you know? What other stories do you know about people who were impacted by reading?