Interesting article for all librarians

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I found this interesting article and wanted to share it with all. It shows how much librarians really do help...

Quit Whining and Read
by John Micklos, Jr.

Raised in a storage unit, Jodi Jill used the power of words to become an author and literacy advocate

"People who have always been readers don't understand how it feels not to have words," says author and literacy advocate Jodi Jill. "People have to know that words are power."

More than most people, Jill can truly appreciate the power of words, and she can truly empathize with those who don't have them. You see, Jill spent a decade of her youth living in a storage unit in Loveland, Colorado, along with her parents and four siblings.

Jill's bizarre upbringing deprived her of the opportunity to attend school; her only education came from filling out worksheets her mother ordered from home-schooling programs. But Jill's mother never taught her to read, and she was seldom able to complete the worksheets.

One bright spot in Jill's traumatic childhood was the family's weekly visit to the public library in Loveland. Each week Jill browsed through the children's section, usually choosing books with cheerful-looking covers. Although she was unable to read the books, Jill realized that the words within them held the key to a better future. Her favorite book was Curious George Rides a Bike.

One day when Jill was 15 a librarian showed her how to use an audiotape along with the book. It took 30 or 40 readings before Jill finally realized that the tape wasn't describing the pictures in the book, but the words. With this discovery came her road to freedom. Jill laboriously taught herself to read word by word, listening to the tapes over and over and matching the sounds to each word. "It's a hard way of learning to read," she says, "but a very simple way."

Reading opened the door to life outside the storage unit. Jill read all kinds of books, learning about skyscrapers and enjoying the humor of Mark Twain. She dreamed of writing books like the ones she read so eagerly each week.

Simple things fascinated her. She read a book about how faucets worked because there was no running water in the storage unit. "We used faucets only at the library," she recalls. "I thought there was a bucket on the other side of the wall until I read about it."

"I saw the world through books," Jill says. "There was this whole other world I had never been exposed to, and I was able to read about it, think about it, and dream about it." She also began making plans to take her place in that world.

From reader to writer
In the summer of 1990, at the age of 19, Jodi Jill made a break for freedom. With $200 in her pocket, she hitchhiked to the bus station and bought a ticket to New York City. Along the way she stopped in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. At each place she marveled at the sights and the crowds of people.

Jill spent two weeks in New York, seeing the sights by day and living on the streets at night. She wanted to stay longer, so she went to an employment agency and tried to get some sort of writing job. But when the agency asked for her work history and an address, she got nervous and left. With no way to support herself, she decided to return home.

When she arrived back in Colorado, she found that her parents were splitting up and leaving the storage unit. Her father was taking her three brothers; she and her sister were to go with their mother. Instead, the two young women struck out on their own. They went to Fort Collins, where they found jobs and a place to live.

Jill did clerical work. She read a dozen books a week, eager to soak up more information about the still-mysterious world around her. Eventually, she tried her hand at writing, doing columns for a local newspaper and magazine. She even developed a Brain Baffler challenge that she sold to weekly newspapers.

But still she dreamed of a real career as a writer or editor. She found she didn't have the education to qualify for most jobs in the field, so she decided she would sell books. She interned with a publisher, with the National Writers Association, and with author Dave Thomas.

"I took calls, read their stuff, and mimicked them as much as possible," Jill recalls. She did this for a couple of years while starting the Eden Literary Agency. Eventually, she began to run the agency full time.

"I truly believe that books helped me get where I am today," Jill says. "I have always believed in giving back, so I started the literary agency in the belief I could help authors and maybe become a writer myself." Over the years, she helped her clients place dozens of books with publishers, and she began writing some books of her own.

Quit Whining and Read
As a literary agent, Jill attended many conferences and book fairs. Often she would see people who she could tell couldn't read well. One time a woman even came up and asked her about reading programs, apparently confusing the terms "literary" and "literacy."

Remembering how reading had liberated her own life, Jill wanted to help. "I believed there was something I could do for these people," she says.

About five years ago Jill developed T-shirts bearing the slogan "Quit Whining and Read," based on the advice she had given her squirmy brother during the family's visits to the Loveland library years earlier. Brad Evans, a designer from Boulder, created the reader in the logo. Jill began selling the shirts at conferences, donating half the profits to various literacy groups. The shirts were so popular that she later added tote bags, magnets, and sweatshirts.

"Even if they didn't buy the shirt, they pointed and laughed," Jill says. "They related to it and thought about it."

Last year Jill closed down the literary agency and began devoting all her time to Quit Whining and Read and to her own writing. A local publisher, Bent Light Media, graciously agreed to support the project by handling distribution for the Quit Whining and Read materials.

Although Jill had previously compiled some of her Brain Bafflers into book form and prepared several chapbooks, she took special pride last year when her first real book, Tours for Free in Colorado, was published by Bent Light Media. She recently finished the manuscript for another book, Tours for Free in Southern California.

For Jill, seeing her books in bookstores along with works by writers such as Mark Twain is a dream come true. "Whenever I see my book in a bookstore, I get a book of Mark Twain's and I put it next to mine," she says.

Raising awareness, raising funds
For a long time, Jill hid the truth about her childhood, ashamed of her past. In recent years, however, she has begun to share her story at writers' conferences and with student groups at universities such as Harvard and Rice. Speaking to the university students was a great experience, she says, "because it was an opportunity to speak to people on the opposite side of my life experience."

"What I've realized by telling my story," she says, "is that while it's difficult, it's been helpful for me as well. For a long time, there was a big blank when I talked about my life. Now I talk about it; it's part of who I am."

To further spread the word about literacy, Jill created an "Images of Literacy" art exhibit, which has been shown at the Rocky Mountain Book Festival, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Denver Public Library, and many other places. These 15 pieces of art depict various aspects of literacy in interesting ways.

Jill estimates that the Quit Whining and Read campaign has thus far raised between $30,000 and $35,000 for literacy work. There is a grant form on the website (http://www.quitwhining.com), and any literacy group is welcome to submit an application for funds. Jill and others screen the forms quarterly and decide which groups to help and how. "There are so many literacy groups, and we want to cover as many as we can," Jill says.

It's been a long trip for Jodi Jill from storage unit to author and literacy advocate—painful at times, but triumphant in the end. "It's not about the problems you've had in life," she says. "It's about today and helping the people who can't read."

John Micklos, Jr. is editor in chief of Reading Today.

-- posted by AnnieBttr

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