Big Brother Mouse: A Book for Every Child in Laos
April 2009 Photo from Big Brother Mouse website Imagine a place where there are no books, where most people have never seen a book, except perhaps a dry and dog-eared textbook shared by a classroom of students in the village school. Imagine children learning to 'read' by looking at letters and words written on a chalkboard – if they have the luxury of attending school at all. Imagine having to teach a child how to 'work' a book – how to turn the pages, one by one, to reveal the rest of the story, the next picture. The place is rural Laos, where most of the seven million Laotians live. Villages are often remote, accessible by long and grueling bus-rides over rough dirt tracks, and then only during the dry season. Some are accessible only by slow river-boat, loaded to the gunwales with people and cargo. Many are accessible only on foot. Life in these villages is virtually unchanged from what it was 50 or even ...