Yaya Yuan is Advocacy and U.S. Program Director for the nonprofit organization LitWorld (www.litworld.org). LitWorld empowers children to create lives of independence, hope, and joy through its LitClub and LitCamp programs and its World Read Aloud Day campaign. She recently wrote an essay for our Open a World of Possible initiative, reflecting upon her early experiences as a reader, which we've repurposed here. The full version is also available in our Open a World of Possible book, which you can download for free here.
If I were asked to make a list of words to describe myself today, reader would be right there at the top. But I have not always identified as a reader. I was born in China, and if we did do read-alouds in Chinese preschool, it did not leave much of an impression as I can’t remember a single one. When I moved to the United States, I struggled to communicate and only managed to piece together what I wanted to say in a confusing mix of Chinese and English. Speaking was difficult for me and reading was even harder.
Then, when I was seven or eight, my father read to me from The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I consider this my first reading memory. Finally fluent in my new language, I fell in love with the story of the four mystery-solving brothers and sisters, and I rejoiced with them when they found their grandfather and a place to call home.
From then on, I was unstoppable. I read everything from The Babysitter’s Club by Ann M. Martin to Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. And if I loved a story, I read it again. I read before I went to bed and first thing when I woke up. Series were my favorites because I could spend just a little more time with the places I loved and the people I considered to be my friends.
In my work, I find there are many children who do not think of themselves as readers. Usually, they live in slums (or worse) and do not have the resources to explore what it means to be a reader. Sometimes they have been told that they are bad readers, and so, they write themselves off at an early age and give up on reading entirely.
But, gather any of these children together, read a book to them, and just like that, a lifelong love of reading is sparked, new worlds are discovered, and new friends are made.
In the Philippines, I was part of a LitWorld team that worked with a group of teenagers who seemed far older than their 16 years, many of them already acting as parents for their younger siblings. As mature and grown-up as they had to be, when I read aloud Bill and Pete by Tomie dePaola, they shrieked and guffawed when the crocodile-hunting Bad Guy runs for his life, naked, down the banks of the Nile.
In India, I was trying to wrangle a raucous group of six-year-old boys, doing everything I could think of to get all 20 of them to sit down quietly at the same time, when I decided to read them Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. You have never heard a quieter pack of wild things—until we got to the wild rumpus, of course.
In Haiti, we ran a camp for 30 young girls, ages six to eighteen, and despite the rather large age range, the minute they entered the LitWorld library where we hosted camp, each and every one of them would grab a book and huddle close together, reading in groups of two or three, the room buzzing with the sounds of shared stories.
In New York, I have spent the last three years mentoring a group of girls who will soon graduate high school and fulfill their dreams of attending college. Each one of them has grown into her own reading identity during our time together, deciding what she likes, what she does not like, and debating plot twists and character traits with her friends—practicing the habits of lifelong readers.
These moments stand out to me as testimonials and they bear witness to the power of reading. Most of these children did not think of themselves as readers. But by falling in love with a story, they, too, can say, “Yes, I am a reader!” They will continue to take books into their hands and explore new worlds, make new friends, and cultivate a brighter future. To me, reading makes possible joyful communities full of endless hope and wonder.
