The United States Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has recently revealed its plans for the realization of ‘One BiH, One Book‘ project. Project is to be realized in cooperation with the publishing house “Sahinpasic” and “SOS Design” and includes 69 high schools from 39 different cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina.
‘One BiH, One Book’ is inspired by the American projects of reading in communities such as ‘One City, One Book‘ and ‘What if the entire Seattle read the same book?’, initiated by the librarian Nancy Pearl. The idea of having similar projects in BiH was born when Nancy Pearl visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in January 2013 and held workshops and seminars in schools and libraries across the country.
The book of choice for this project was Sherman Alexie’s award winning novel The absolute true diary of a part-time Indian. According to Sunshine Ison, the cultural attaché at the US Embassy in BiH, this book is a chance for BiH students to learn more about culture and traditions of the United States. She also emphasized that this project is an opportunity for young people to get to know each other and communicate their ideas and opinions, and use the book’s theme to discuss challenges of a multi-cultural societies such as BiH and US.
So far, 1400 books were distributed across participating schools, but it is estimated that around 2000 young people already read it; an impressive number considering that the books are entirely in English. The program will end in mid-May with the two day festival that will include English spelling bee contest, students’ presentations, plays and performances and the visit from the book illustrator Ellen Forney. 21 BiH students will also have the opportunity to visit Seattle where they’ll meet book’s author, Sherman Alexie.
Creative Commons Love: Steve Rhodes on Flickr.com
Written by Aldina Dzebo