Me Read Pretty One Day
If you’re reading this post, congratulations! You’re one of the 83% of the people in the world who can.
In case that’s not clear enough, 17% of people in the world TODAY can’t read simple sentences. In a world full of smart phones, instant messaging, and internet connections galore, it can be hard to fathom.
I make no secret out of my love of reading. How many of us wear glasses today due to reading under the covers as children after lights-out because we had to know how the book ended? One of my favorite books of all time is Perfect, by Judith McNaught. The heroine, Julie, grew up as a foster child and never learned to read. Like all good romance novel characters, she figures it out and eventually becomes a teacher. But many people don’t have the opportunities she did (or we do).
Can you imagine your life without the ability to read the written word? I would feel like a piece of me had been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole. But if I was never able to read, I would have a different kind of gaping hole—one where many wonderful characters and fantastical settings of books I love never existed in my soul, where the profound truths of history don’t live in my consciousness, and a simple crayon-drawn card from my kids doesn’t make sense.
Let’s take a hard look at the statistics:
Today, nearly 17% of the world’s adult population is still not literate; two thirds of them women, making gender equality even harder to achieve.
The scale of illiteracy among youth also represents an enormous challenge; an estimated 122 million youth globally are illiterate, of which young women represent 60.7%.
The 67.4 million children who are out of school are likely to encounter great difficulties in the future, as deficient or non-existent basic education is the root cause of illiteracy.
With some 775 million adults lacking minimum literacy skills, literacy for all thus remains elusive.
(Source: UNESCO)
This horrifies me as an author, a life-long reader, female and mother. How did it make you feel?
We have something precious, something I know I take for granted.
Wanna help? Here’s just one of many, many wonderful organizations where you can make a difference.
Find another if you don’t like this one. I’m in no way endorsing a particular organization over another.
People—no matter their nationality or station in life—deserve the ability to read. Do your own research and then decide if this issue speaks to you. It does to me.
*steps down off soapbox*
And now for those of you who stayed with me for the whole post, I’m giving away a print copy of one of my backlist titles to a randomly drawn commenter below who can tell me the real title of the book I butchered to title this blog. Bonus points if you can guess the reason I chose it. 
