Connecting Reading and Peace with Writer Julia Alvarez

Dear Santiago Lopez,
I think it’s so cool you are doing this. I’m with you that libraries are so important. It’s the house that holds all our stories. That’s why we’ve got to make sure all different kinds of storytellers are allowed to live there, on those shelves.

And I also agree with you about reading being a peace project. When you read, you become someone else. Simple as that! So, you get to understand someone else’s world from the inside out. If we did more of that and less making enemies we would have peace. Maybe every ruler of every country should have to spend part of every day in the library reading? It would be a better world, you think? At least, while they are in the library reading, they aren’t out causing trouble in the world.

You asked for a story from when I was a little girl. Well, back then, I lived in the Dominican Republic under a cruel dictatorship. We didn’t have things like public libraries. Actually, people were afraid to be caught reading or talking about ideas. The dictator thought intellectuals, writers and artists were troublemakers. (He was right! Ask your dad?) So it was a culture of censorship.

So I didn’t grow up reading or seeing people reading. But I did grow up surrounded by wonderful storytellers. Since people didn’t dare to write things down, they learn to say what they needed to say by telling stories. Later, when we fled to the United States, and I became a reader, I realized that even though people in my family were not readers, they were expert storytellers.

When we came to this country, I discovered the library! Wow! I knew I had come to a special place. I think more than the United States, it was in libraries that I discovered the great democracy my family had come searching for in this country. No one was barred from reading. And stories were about all of us in the human family. The story of a slave girl or the story of a prince. Every life was full of mystery and beauty, sadness and joy. And when you read, you are reminded that you are part of one human family.

So, you see, I totally agree with you! Maybe your dad—or heck, you!--can devise a bumpersticker: READ for WORLD PEACE!!!

Julia Alvarez

I saw Julia Alvarez talk in Washington D.C. with my parents and she is such a fantastic writer I wanted to learn more about her. She was born in New York City but when she was a small baby she moved to a place called the Dominican Republic for ten years. Her family had to flee because they were in danger. My parents told me she wrote a famous book for grown ups called How the García Girls Lost Their Accents about a family who had to leave the Dominican Republic.

She writes great books for us kids too.
At our school we learn that bullies are wrong and when she came back to America she met people who were mean to her just because she spoke another language and was different. She felt alone and homesick but books became a good friend. There is a very happy ending to this story because she decided to become a writer and this is a book she gave me called Return to Sender. She is a great storyteller and it won the Pura Belpré medal. It is a chapter book so Mom read it to me and it is a beautiful story and we are getting another to put in our growing library. We also listened to Julia Alvarez read part of it on TeachingBooks.net and you can listen too. She is a great storyteller and talks about what she calls a pebble in her shoe. That means an idea. I like the way she uses her words to paint pictures. Writers can talk like they are singing sweet poems .

Click here to listen to Julia Alvarez:
http://www.teachingbooks.net/book_reading.cgi?id=3951&a=1
You have to go to Julia Alvarez's website to know more about her books. There is a beautiful drawing of her there with very long hair and many things floating inside it-like her ideas.

Thank you Julia Alvarez for writing to us and I really, really like your books and ideas about peace. http://www.juliaalvarez.com/