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Nationwide Ready Set Go Books, a publishing initiative established by the non-profit Open Hearts Big Dreams to increase access to books and thus support literacy in Ethiopia, has released its 100th book. The book, Letter From a Plow Nation written by Dr. Worku Mulat and illustrated by Daniel Getahun, furthers Ready Set Go Books’ objective to publish books that both entertain and inform young readers by telling vibrant stories that not only spotlight Ethiopian characters, lives, and languages, but also expose readers to the country’s ever-growing community of authors and illustrators.
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PUBLISHER OF BOOKS THAT SPOTLIGHT ETHIOPIAN STORIES AND LANGUAGES RELEASES 100TH BOOK
Children need to see themselves and their lives reflected in books. Children also need to see lives and experiences that are unlike their own to gain empathy and understanding in a diverse world. It’s with these two ideas in mind that Ready Set Go Books was launched.
Ethiopia is Africa’s second-most populous country, with nearly half of that population composed of children under fourteen. Recent country-wide reading surveys have shown that too few children are learning to read in Ethiopian schools. One big reason is a lack of books that are appealing and in local languages.
With 100 individual titles, Ready Set Go Books is taking big first steps to address that challenge. But children seeing their worlds reflected back at them through books is not a problem-centered in only one country. Even though half of all children in the United States are of color, only 23% of children’s books published in the US in 2018 had protagonists of color. Because of this, Ready Set Go Books also publishes and distributes their books worldwide in English, so that children across the globe have a chance to see lives in stories that can open the world for them.
