Review of The Art of Miss Chew, by Patricia Polacco

Art, Biography, History, Picture Book Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Art of Miss Chew

by Patricia Polacco

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012. 42 pages.
Starred Review

Patricia Polacco tells a personal story here about the art teacher who got her started as an artist.

It begins with another teacher, Mr. Donovan, who noticed that if he gave Patricia extra time, she could pass her tests with no trouble. He also sees that she’s a natural artist, and helps her get in with the high school art teacher, Miss Chew.

Miss Chew taught Patricia how to paint and how to see. She noticed that Patricia was seeing patterns instead of letters and got her in with a reading specialist. But especially, she valued Patricia’s art and gave her a featured place in the art show, the only non-high school student in the show.

This book is best read to be appreciated. I’ve long loved Patricia Polacco’s art, but the paintings in this book feel more warm and loving than ever. In the paintings themselves, you can clearly see how deeply grateful she still feels toward those two remarkable teachers. There’s also a sparkle in the pictures of young Trisha as she discovers true joy in making art.

A remarkable and memorable book.

patriciapolacco.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/art_of_miss_chew.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Temple Grandin, by Sy Montgomery

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Temple Grandin

How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World

by Sy Montgomery

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2012.
Starred Review

Years ago, I read Temple Grandin’s book for adults, Animals in Translation, and named it a 2005 Sonderbooks Stand-out. In that book, she described how being autistic has given her extra insight into how animals think, and touched off her amazing career.

This book, written for children, tells more about that amazing career. She talks about what it was like growing up autistic, and how different she was from other kids. There are plenty of pictures, including some of her drawings of ways to make slaughterhouse systems more humane.

The overall message of Temple’s life is that the things that made her different from other people were the things that made her work so notable and so needed. This book is phrased to fascinate people interested in Temple Grandin’s life and achievements, but also to inspire kids who feel like no one understands them. Maybe their differences are the keys to their strengths.

In an early chapter, we read:

Along with these problems, people with autism often have amazing talents. It’s as if the brain makes up for deficits in one area with special gifts in others. “Autistic people have a really stellar ability to use the visual parts of the right side of the brain to compensate for problems with language processing,” Dr. Minshew says. Most children take a long time to find Waldo hidden in a detailed cartoon — but autistic children usually spot him right away. In situations like this, says Dr. Minshew, autism “may be a decided advantage!” And, these kids may be able to make friends with others who share their interests, such as art, music, computer programming, or writing.

“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic,” Temple says today, “I wouldn’t do it. It’s part of who I am.” One man who first heard Temple speak when he was a young soldier stationed in Denver, phoned a call-in radio show years later to talk to her. “Thank you so much,” he said, “for giving me the inspiration to say that my brain’s not broken. Just different.”

A fascinating book about a remarkable woman.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/temple_grandin.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy I got at an ALA Conference and checked against a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Charles and Emma, by Deborah Heiligman

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Nonfiction Review, Romance, Science, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Charles and Emma

The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2009. 268 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Winner YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award
2009 National Book Award Finalist
2010 Printz Honor Book

Okay, when this book first came out, I wasn’t too interested. I grew up in a conservative Christian family, and didn’t exactly see Charles Darwin as a hero. Then the book kept winning awards, and got strong comments from the judges in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books. I thought I really should read it. Then I met Deborah Heiligman at the 2010 ALA Annual Conference. When I found out why she wrote it, I knew I had to read it. I purchased a book and got her signature. However, it still took me until this year, when I was taking a class on the Printz Award, to finally get it read.

Deborah explains in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book how her husband got her interested in the story that would become this book:

“Jon’s been writing about science and evolution since we met. I had just graduated from college with a major in religious studies. We started talking immediately — about science and religion and writing and pretty much everything else — and we haven’t stopped since.

“One day, about seven years ago, Jon said to me, ‘You know, Charles Darwin’s wife was religious.’ I looked at him. He continued, ‘And they loved each other very much. She was afraid he would go to hell and they wouldn’t be together for eternity.'”

Evolution is supposed to be opposed to Christianity, right? So how is it possible that Charles Darwin’s wife was deeply religious — and yet the two were very much in love.

Deborah Heiligman tells the love story of Charles and Emma Darwin beautifully. It’s clearly a work of nonfiction — she relies heavily on letters and journals and notebooks written by the two of them — but it reads like a novel. Of course, in a story book, the marriage probably wouldn’t have worked. I found it especially interesting that Charles’ father advised him not to tell his new wife about his doubts about religion. But Charles couldn’t hide them from her. And she loved him anyway and even edited his books, including The Origin of Species.

This book tells the story of how Charles Darwin’s scientific theories developed, but it especially shows us the man who loved his wife and children very much. And whatever your views, you can’t help but fall for the man presented here, and the wife who provided exactly what he needed to be such a distinguished scientist.

This book is wonderfully presented. I like the quotations at the head of each chapter and the way Deborah Heiligman has arranged the facts in such an interesting manner. This book presents a compelling story that is all the more amazing because it’s true.

“You will be forming theories about me & if I am cross or out of temper you will only consider ‘What does that prove.’ Which will be a very grand & philosophical way of considering it. — Emma to Charles, January 23, 1839”

DeborahHeiligman.com
HenryHoltKids.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/charles_and_emma.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own book, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.

Review of The Wilder Life, by Wendy McClure

Audiobooks, Biography, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Travel, True Stories 0

The Wilder Life

My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie

by Wendy McClure

Performed by Teri Clark Linden

Brilliance Audio, 2011. 9 discs, 10 hours, 43 minutes.

This audiobook was a fun one to listen to while driving to work and back. It felt a little on the long side, but I handled that by giving myself breaks of a few days in between discs. The narrator sounded a little too much like a teenager to me, actually sounding a whole lot like Natalie Moore, who narrated Dairy Queen. However, I got used to her voice and rationalized that the author was indeed a lot younger than me, so it was okay.

The book is about Wendy McClure’s childhood passion for the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her quest to revisit the world of the books by seeing all the Little House sites peppered over America.

Now, I’ll confess right up front that I never read the Little House books myself. I think I read the first one, Little House in the Big Woods, on the urging of Karen Iwata, my best friend in second and third grades, but I thought it was frightfully boring. Those pioneer books didn’t grab me. I remember I also gave up on Caddie Woodlawn.

However, when my sons were growing up, my husband read them all the Little House books, which he had read and loved when he was a child, and I listened in and found them not so bad at all. What’s more, we had visited the home in Missouri where Laura lived as an adult and wrote the books.

And I certainly know about loving childhood books! Some day, some day, I will visit Prince Edward Island, where Lucy Maud Montgomery set her books. Hmm. Maybe I should write a book about it when I do. Though at least Laura Ingalls Wilder had many, many home sites, so Wendy McClure did have a book-length story to tell.

I found the book all the more fascinating because right now I’m in the middle of researching my family history. I keep thinking of the old picture I saw of my grandma as a baby with her brothers in front of their sod house. I remember her telling me, “Just like Laura Ingalls Wilder!” She and my grandpa were actually born in Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma — so quite near the original Little House on the Prairie. What’s more, lots and lots of my ancestors were pioneers and farmers, moving steadily west, so the world of the Little House books is really quite close to the story of my own roots — and that made Wendy McClure’s visiting the home sites all the more interesting to me.

And I have to admit, Wendy McClure knows how to make the tale interesting. She tells about each place she visits, the people she sees, and what she felt to see them. She explores lots of her feelings about the books and about the places, many of which any book lover can easily relate to. She also throws in facts about Laura and her family, but sprinkles them nicely so we don’t get bored.

In short, I recommend this book for anyone who loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, or just anyone who loves going back to the children’s books they cherished as a child. The story doesn’t have a lot of tension or a driving plot, but that actually makes it nice listening for a commute. And, hey, anyone who gets a chance to do a Little House road trip, following the steps of Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Wendy McClure), will definitely want to have this for the ride.

www.terriclarkvoiceover.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Sex, Mom, & God, by Frank Schaeffer

Biography, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Sex, Mom, & God

How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics — and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

by Frank Schaeffer

Da Capo Press, 2011. 298 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 Biography

Sex, Mom & God continues along the lines of Frank Schaeffer’s earlier book, Crazy for God. Frank’s parents, Edith and Francis Schaeffer, were my own parents’ heroes, and in these books, Frank Schaeffer reveals that his upbringing was even more extreme than my own. Much more, in fact.

Frank Schaeffer has ended up with a theology much more liberal than my own, but I still appreciate his words in this book. Be careful when you revere Scripture so much, you don’t stop to think if the God you worship would really be behind what you think Scripture is saying.

I do have a very high respect for the Bible. But I still think we would all do well to listen to Frank Schaeffer’s words about any holy Scripture:

‘There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books “say,” not because of them. “But where would that leave me?” my former self would have asked. “I’d be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.” Yes, and perhaps that’s the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, “I could be wrong.”’

The book is also entertaining, though I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it. He tells what his mother told him about sex, her take on what the Bible says about sex, and what he learned for himself. The stories about what his Evangelical culture said about sex still give me a fascinated horror. But what can I say? I really like the perspective he has ended up with in writing this book, somehow laughing at the crazy ideas we humans come up with, yet as his subtitle says, managing to love women and Jesus anyway.

I also love it that he shows so much love and respect toward his Mom, who now has Alzheimer’s. He makes it clear that, no matter what her theology, her heart was kind and loving.

A very interesting book, especially for those who grew up Evangelical. I suspect it would also be interesting for those who think that Christians are narrow-minded. Frank Schaeffer definitely does not take a narrow-minded approach himself.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/sex_mom_and_god.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Other Books from 2011

Animal Characters, Biography, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Nonfiction Review 0

I currently have 43 reviews I’ve written that are waiting to be posted, a stack of books waiting for me to review them, and more books I’ve read in 2012 now piling up. I began Sonderbooks when I was working half-time, and I reviewed everything I read (at least everything I enjoyed). I hate it when I can’t keep that up! However, now I’m working full-time, and last July, I had a stroke. Since then, I need more sleep than I did before. I also had more reading time, so I simply got farther behind. Worse, I still have not recovered. Last Thursday, I had a Transient Ischemic Attack (a mini-stroke) lasting only three seconds. But it means the Coumadin I’m taking is not effectively keeping me from strokes, and what’s more, now I feel awful and only lasted a half-day at work today. I’m up writing this in hopes it will make me tired enough to get some sleep when I go to bed.

Anyway, enough complaining! All that is to say that I read some great books that are sitting here waiting and waiting to be reviewed. I’m going to list them now with brief reviews, because they deserve attention and readers. But in the interests of catching up, I’m not going to give them their own pages on Sonderbooks. (Sigh.) I’ll go until my laundry’s done and see how far that takes me.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, by Jeanne Birdsall

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011. 295 pages.

These first two books, I grant you, I read without having read the books that came before them. I read them anyway, because they were on the Heavy Medal blog’s Mock Newbery Shortlist. This book comes after The Penderwicks and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street.

Quite some time ago, I tried to listen to Penderwicks on audio and got several chapters in, but finally decided I simply couldn’t stand listening to the grandmotherly voice of the reader. Reading The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, at first I heard that same voice in my head and was very put off, but as I persevered, I got more into the story.

The basic story is the classic one of four sisters having fun together. In this book, the oldest sister, Rosalind, is having vacation separate from the younger three. So Skye is concerned about being the OAP (oldest available Penderwick). As someone from a big family, that bothered me a bit that one of the children should feel so responsible for her younger siblings. Parents, that is your job! Though their Dad is going on his honeymoon, so he’s not there, but they are staying with an aunt, for goodness’ sake!

However, that, too, I was able to get past. Once I settled in and enjoyed it, it was a lovely vacation story about three sisters having vacation adventures with their friend, a boy, and new friends they met in Maine. I have to admit I would have loved to read these books with my kids — if I had had daughters instead of sons. This is a nice solid middle grade story, but I do think better for girls than boys.

The Trouble with May Amelia, by Jennifer L. Holm

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York, 2011. 204 pages.

The Trouble with May Amelia is a sequel to Newbery-Honor-winning Our Only May Amelia. This is another solid choice for middle-grade girls, this time historical fiction set in Washington State in 1900. With this one, I was put off by the present tense voice, which I’m prejudiced against, and I didn’t already know the characters like most readers would have. However, I was still quickly pulled into the story.

May Amelia’s the seventh child and the only girl in a Finnish family whose father believes that Girls Are Useless. May Amelia wants desperately to believe that she’s not, but there are some things she’s not good at — like cooking and mending. The book covers plenty of entertaining adventures of pioneer life on the Nasel River.

Then a man comes around who’s got an investment that’s sure to make the family millions. May Amelia’s father has her translate. She does her best, and the reader can see that she does yet be fully aware of impending doom. In fact, lots of troubles befall the family, but through it all we’ve got an upbeat, very fun book to read. I am looking forward to reading Our Only May Amelia when I get there on my quest to read all the Newbery winners and Honor books.

The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic, by Michael Sims

Walker & Company, New York, 2011. 307 pages.

This one’s for adults. It’s a biography of E. B. White, and especially focuses on the parts of his life that contributed to the creation of his masterpiece, Charlotte’s Web. I wasn’t surprised to learn of the in-depth research he did on spiders while writing the book, and am all the more impressed by how well he wove those things into the story. I also was not surprised to learn that he had always loved farms and farm animals. That certainly is also obvious in his book.

Those who love children’s literature in general and Charlotte’s Web in particular will enjoy this book.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale, by Carmen Agra Deedy & Randall Wright, Drawings by Barry Moser

Peachtree, Atlanta, 2011. 228 pages.

Here’s another solid middle-grade choice, this time for boys or girls. This one’s definitely for people who like animal stories. It has a similar flavor to The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo.

The book is set at an inn which still exists today, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, at the time when Charles Dickens was a frequent guest. The main character is a street cat, Skilley, who loves cheese — and The Cheshire Cheese has the best cheese in England.

A resident mouse, Pip, and Skilley come up with a plan. Skilley will catch mice at the inn, but then he will let them go. In return, they will bring him cheese, and they will be allowed to stay at the inn. But this cozy plan has trouble when another street cat is brought into the inn. On top of that, there’s someone in the attic who claims the fate of the entire country rests upon his own fate. Meanwhile, Charles Dickens is looking for an opening for his novel about the French Revolution….

That’s all I have time for tonight, but I hope maybe I’ll have won these books some readers. Happy Reading!

Review of Drawing From Memory, by Allen Say

Art, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Graphic Memoir, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 1

Drawing From Memory

by Allen Say

Scholastic Press, 2011. 64 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Standout: #4 Children’s Nonfiction

Drawing From Memory is not quite a graphic novel (make that graphic biography). There are some speech bubbles, but the majority of pictures don’t have them. This is a remembrance with lots and lots of pictures. The pictures vary from drawings to photos to comics to realistic paintings.

Allen Say moved into his own apartment (from his grandmother’s house) when he was not-quite thirteen years old. Shortly after moving to the apartment, he read a story about a boy three years older, who was apprenticed to Noro Shinpei, one of the most famous cartoonists in Japan. Allen decided to find him and ask to be an apprentice as well.

The book tells the story of Allen’s years with his Sensei, learning and growing, and eventually getting the chance to go to America. He talks about the process of learning to draw, those who learned with him, and especially the close relationship with his teacher. Best of all is the wide variety of illustrations that accompany the story and make it alive.

This is one of those wonderful books in large format that may get hidden in the Biography section of the library. This isn’t the sort of story you’d want for a report, but it’s very much an inspiring story of someone’s life and about finding and following your calling. This is a delightful book.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/drawing_from_memory.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy I got at 2011 ALA Annual Conference.

Review of Erika’s Story, by Ruth Vander Zee

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, True Stories 0

Erika’s Story

by Ruth Vander Zee
illustrated by Roberto Innocenti

Creative Editions, Mankato, MN, 2003. 24 pages.

I actually found this book when I was weeding library books that hadn’t been checked out in two years. This one was in good condition, and when I started reading it, I was transfixed. It was too good to weed from the collection, and too powerful not to check out and review.

I should add that nonfiction picture books like this one easily get lost on the shelves. It’s not suitable for a school report, and kids usually don’t go looking in the nonfiction section for powerful stories. So they don’t get read as often as they deserve to be.

The story in this book is simple, and it’s powerfully told. The author met a Jewish lady in Rothenburg, Germany, and relates her story. The lady, Erika, speculates about how it must have been for her parents, herded onto a cattle car headed for the concentration camps. But she doesn’t know anything about them for sure.

“As the train slowed through a village, my mother must have looked up through the opening near the top of the cattle car. With my father, she must have tried spreading the barbed wire that covered the hole. My mother must have lifted me over her head and toward the dim daylight. What happened next is the only thing I know for sure.

“My mother threw me from the train.”

Erika was taken in by a woman who risked her life by caring for Erika and giving her a name and an approximate birthdate. She grew up and married and had children of her own.

The story is told simply and starkly. The pictures are beautiful and realistic. It’s interesting that the artist doesn’t show anybody’s faces except the baby, as if to emphasize all that Erika doesn’t know about her family. The pink baby blanket is also the brightest spot of color in the pictures from the past.

The story is also gently told, with an emphasis on Erika’s survival. You could read this to a child and then talk about it as much or as little as you like, but it’s a relatively gentle introduction to the horrors of the Holocaust.

And it’s definitely powerful for an adult reader, too. What would it take for a mother to throw her baby off a train? The book doesn’t ask any questions like that, which leaves the readers asking themselves.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/erikas_story.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Biography, Cross Cultural, Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review 0

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Harper, 2011. 256 pages.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the story Kamila Sidiqi and how she kept her family of sisters — and many of their neighbors — going when the Taliban came.

Kamila got her teaching certificate in 1996, just before the Taliban came. She’d gone to classes despite the war. But with the Taliban in charge, she couldn’t teach. Her father and oldest brother had to leave Kabul, for fear of getting targeted by the Taliban. She and her sisters had to stay inside, and could only leave the house in full chadri with a male relative escort. The situation in Kabul got worse and worse.

“This is what I have to figure out, Kamila thought to herself. I need to find something I can do at home, behind closed doors. I need to find something that people need, something useful that they’ll want to buy. She knew she had very few options. Only basic necessities mattered now; no one had money for anything else. Teaching school might be an option, but it was unlikely to earn her enough money, since most families still kept their girls at home out of fear for their safety. And she certainly didn’t want her income to depend on an improvement in the security situation.

“Kamila spent long days thinking about her options, considering which skills she could learn quickly that would also bring in enough afghani to make a difference for her family. And then it came to her, inspired by her older sister Malika, who, along with being a great teacher, had over many years developed into a talented — and sought-after — seamstress. Women from her neighborhood in Karteh Parwan loved her work so much that Malika’s tailoring income now earned her almost as much as her teacher’s salary. That’s it, Kamila thought. I’ll become a seamstress.

“There were many positives: she could do the work in her living room, her sisters could help, and, most important of all, she had seen for herself at Lycee Myriam that the market for clothing remained strong. Even with the Taliban in power and the economy collapsing, women would still need simple dresses. As long as she kept quiet and didn’t attract unnecessary attention, the risks should be manageable.

“Kamila faced just one major obstacle: she had no idea how to sew.”

This book tells the compelling story of how Kamila faced that, and many other obstacles that were by no means minor, and built a thriving business that even helped other neighboring families without men in charge.

I like the author’s summary at the end of why Kamila’s story is so important:

“Brave young women commit heroic acts every day, with no one bearing witness. This was a chance to even the ledger, to share one small story that made the difference between starvation and survival for the families whose lives it changed. I wanted to pull the curtain back for readers on a place foreigners know more for its rocket attacks and roadside bombs than its countless quiet feats of courage. And to introduce them to the young women like Kamila Sidiqi who will go on. No matter what.”

www.gaylelemmon.com
www.harpercollins.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/dressmaker_of_khair_khana.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of A Fistful of Rice, by Vikram Akula

Biography, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

A Fistful of Rice

My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability

by Vikram Akula

Harvard Business Review Press, 2011. 191 pages.

This is an intriguing and hopeful book. Vikram Akula was working in India with a nonprofit organization that offered microfinance loans to poor people. But they quickly ran out of funds.

“The woman looked me in the eye, and with great dignity, she spoke the words that would change my life, ‘Am I not poor, too?’ she asked me. I stared at her, jarred by the question, and she went on. ‘Do I not deserve a chance to get my family out of poverty?’

“Am I not poor, too? With these words, this driven, determined woman suddenly made me see how unfair — unjust, really — our microfinance program was. Yes, we were helping hundreds of poor Indians take the first steps to pull themselves out of poverty. But my program had just $250,000 to spend in thirty villages — that was all DDS had been given for the project. And once that money was disbursed, there was no money left for other poor Indians who desperately wanted a chance too.

“The woman wasn’t asking for a dole. She wasn’t asking for a handout. She was simply asking for an opportunity. But we couldn’t give it to her.

“This was a defining moment for me. We had to find a way to change microfinance — to make it available to any Indian, or any poor person anywhere in the world for that matter, who wanted to escape poverty. Microfinance was a fantastic tool, but a deeply flawed one. There simply had to be a way to scale it beyond the constraints of how it was currently being practiced.”

His solution ended up being charging higher interest — and making a profit from the work the poor people did.

It sounds atrocious, but Vikram Akula ended up convincing me it was a brilliant idea. Now his company is helping thousands of times more people — and has people wanting to invest more money, rather than them having to ask for money.

The book goes into details of how his program works and how they make it good for the people who get the loans as well as for the company. It’s a fascinating story.

I especially liked these paragraphs toward the end of the book:

“I believe a commercial approach is the best way to give the most poor people access to finance. My early days at DDS taught me a crucial lesson: the poor are really no different from you or me. They’re not stupid or slow, and they aren’t looking for us to rescue them or teach them anything. The relationship between SKS and our members is mutually beneficial. Our members are receiving tools that have long been denied them, and using them to do things they’re naturally skilled at doing. In return, SKS is building an enormous member base, establishing a brand, raising money in investments, and continuing to expand the number of poor members served. It’s a perfect circle, one that benefits everyone.

“The notion that it’s somehow unethical to enter into a profitable business working with the poor is insulting to the poor. They are not children who need our protection. They’re working women and men who are thriving under a system that allows them to take their economic lives into their own hands. Treating them as anything less is unjust.”

This reminded me of Libraries.

Bear with me, as I realize I’m someone obsessed by an idea. But I’ve seen homeless people who go to the library every day absolutely refuse when kind people want to give them hand-outs. When my oldest son was small and my husband was a Senior Airman, we had a low enough income to participate in the WIC program, and it felt very demeaning. The government workers assumed we didn’t know much about nutrition, for a start. In the end, the little bit of financial help they could offer wasn’t worth the “educational” sessions we had to sit through. I had too much pride.

So how does this relate to Libraries? Libraries help the poor tremendously, but they allow them to keep their dignity because they help rich people, too. Bottom line, libraries are a big cooperative to purchase books for an entire community at a lower price. Everyone benefits, so no one has to feel that they are singled out to be “helped.” Libraries help everyone, and people can be proud to use them, without feeling obligated.

It is similar with SKS. The investors are making money because of the hard work of those who take out loans. And they are able to get out of poverty, but don’t have to feel indebted to those who made it possible. Those people benefit, too.

Sometimes, you help people more when you allow them the dignity of helping you. When the investors in SKS make a profit, they allow the “helping” not to be all on one side.

Vikram Akula closes his book telling the story of another woman, a woman whose whole family has been helped by SKS.

“I thought back to the woman in the faded purple sari, all those years ago — the woman who asked the question that changed my life: ‘Am I not poor, too?’ And I couldn’t help but contrast her with smiling Yellamma, proudly telling me about how SKS has helped her family.

“‘Am I not doing well?’ she asked. Yes, she was.”

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.