Welcome! to the I Care Book Fair, a marketplace of books about adults and children making courageous commitments to serve communities around the world, especially those with significant numbers of orphans and vulnerable children. Mothering Across Continents (MAC) supporters and volunteers recommend the collection below – in three categories. The selections underline our idea that in a global era "maternal instincts" and "mothering" often extend well-beyond beyond our own families and geographic borders.
- A portion of book sales will fund MAC support of projects in places such as Haiti, South Africa, Rwanda and South Sudan.
- We invite book clubs to read at least one book from the list in the next year and make a tax-deductible donation of any size.
- Please start and join discussions about these books at www.facebook.com/MotheringAcrossContinents.
Have you already read every book on our list? You can still help. Simply fill in the amount of your tax-deductible contribution in the box at the right and click the "Donate Now" button. Thank you for making a difference in the lives of children around the world.
IMPORTANT: During your buying and checkout process, you may see a box asking you to indicate if your purchase is for the Bookfair. This question is not for the Mothering Across Continents (MAC) I Care Book Fair. The box is for a different Barnes & Noble Bookfair program. DO NOT check the box at the bottom of the screen indicating your order is a Bookfair order. Instead, just go ahead and complete your order so that a percentage of the sale will go to MAC.
Women Making Change
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Already read Behind the Beautiful Forevers?
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
By Katherine Boo
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Read more...
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter–Annawadi's "most-everything girl"–will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy."
But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.
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Already read On that Day, Everybody Ate?
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On that Day, Everybody Ate: One Woman's Story of Hope and Possibility in Haiti
By Margaret Trost
Margaret Trost was in her 30s when her husband died suddenly of asthma, leaving her to raise their young son alone. In despair, seeking meaning in her life and in her husband's death, she accepted an invitation to visit Haiti as part of a pilgrimage of reverse mission, to serve the poor as a means to transform the providers. Read more...
This is a moving account of her immersion in the West's most impoverished nation. As she struggles to make sense of such extreme conditions existing so near the US, readers discover with her the healing power of reaching out. In straightforward, conversational prose, with humility, candor, and love, Trost shares the story of a serendipitous flow of events that guided her on her passage from despair to hope.
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Already read The Road of Lost Innocence?
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The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
By Somaly Mam
Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old. For ten years she was shuttled through the brothels of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking until she managed to escape. Read more...
Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed into an activist. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has saved more than 4,000 women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.
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Already read There is No Me Without You?
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There is No Me Without You
By Melissa Fay Greene
Two-time National Book Award nominee Melissa Fay Greene puts a human face on the African AIDS crisis with this powerful story of one woman working to save her country's children. After losing her husband and daughter, Haregewoin Teferra, an Ethiopian woman of modest means, opened her home to some of the thousands of children in Addis Ababa who have been left as orphans. Read more...
This is the story of how Haregewoin transformed her home into an orphanage and day-care center and began facilitating adoptions to homes all over the world, written by a woman who is herself an adoptive parent. At heart, it is a book about children and parents, wherever they may be, however they may find each other.
Men Making Change
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Already read It Happened on the Way to War?
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It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace
By Rye Barcott
In 2000 Rye Barcott, a college student heading into the Marines, spent time living in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. He learned Swahili and listened to young people talk about how they survived in poverty he had never imagined. Read more...
Anxious to help he stumbled into friendship with a widowed nurse and a hardscrabble community organizer. Together, this unlikely trio built a non-governmental organization that would develop a new generation of leaders from within one of Africa's largest slums. Barcott's greatest lesson may be that with the right kind of support, people in desperate places will take charge of their lives and create breathtaking change.
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Already read Leaving Microsoft to Change The World?
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Leaving Microsoft to Change The World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children
By John Wood
John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life's work not at business school or helping lead Microsoft's charge into Asia in the 1990s but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. Read more...
He made the difficult decision to walk away from his lucrative career to create Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that promotes education across the developing world. By the end of 2007, the organization will have established over 5,000 libraries and 400 schools, and awarded long-term scholarships to more than 3,000 girls, giving more than one million children the lifelong gift of education.
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Already read Mountains Beyond Mountains?
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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
By Tracy Kidder
Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, world-class Robin Hood, Paul Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat. In medical school he found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Read more...
This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable. It also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer blasts through convention to get results.
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Are those heavy paper and ink books weighing you down? There's never been a better time to embrace digital technology. A portion of every Nook sold through our website will fund projects serving orphans and vulnerable children in impoverished countries around the world. Simply click on the image above and order your Nook today.
Children & Families Making Change
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The Breadwinner Trilogy
By Deborah Ellis
Set in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this three-part novel paints a stark portrait of life under the Taliban regime. The struggles faced by the story's resilient heroines are based on the true-life stories of women in Afghan refugee camps. Read more...
Deborah Ellis uses simple, compelling language, memorable characters, and a wealth of imaginative detail in this wrenching look at the human cost of war that is also a surprisingly hopeful story of survival.
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The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back
By Kevin Salwen, Hannah Salwen
Fourteen-year old Hannah Salwen had a "eureka" moment—she saw a homeless man in her neighborhood at the precise second a Mercedes coupe pulled up. She said "You know, Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal." Read more...
Her parents knew they had to act on her urge to do something. As a family, they made the extraordinary decision to sell their Atlanta mansion, downsize to a house half its size, and give half of the sale price to a worthy charity. What began as an outlandish scheme became a remarkable journey that transported them across the globe and well out of their comfort zone. In the end they learned that they had the power to change a little corner of the world—and they found themselves changing, too.
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
By William Kamkwamba
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a land withered by drought and hunger. He had read about windmills and dreamed of building one that would bring his family electricity and running water, luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford. Read more...
He used scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves to forge a crude machine that eventually powered four lights, complete with homemade switches and a circuit breaker made from nails and wire. A second windmill turned a water pump that could battle the drought and famine looming with every season. This is the remarkable story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity.
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A Long Walk to Water: Based on a true story
By Linda Sue Park
Set in Sudan, this is a novel that tells two stories—one about a contemporary child who spends her days fetching water, the other about one of this African country's "lost boys." Read more...
Simply and economically written, this account of the experiences of a young Sudanese refugee is suspenseful, poignant, and personal. The ending, which brings together the two separate narrative strands, is unexpected and moving.
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Free the Children: A Young Man Fights Against Child Labor and Proves that Children Can Change the World
By Craig Kielburger
Craig Kielburger is an activist prodigy who, at 12, was talking to national leaders, lecturing in public forums, and following the burning passion that would not allow him to overlook cruel injustices thrust upon children around the world. Read more...
Inspired by a newspaper article about a young boy's murder at the hands of his boss in Pakistan, Kielburger set forth on an international crusade against child sweatshops, virtual slave labor, and the abhorrent working conditions to which many children worldwide are subjected. An inspiring book about the power young people can wield to change the world.
