In early April, a CNN crew visited Shola Children's Library, the first free public library for children in Ethiopia, which opened in 2003. Today Shola is one of several programs operated by Ethiopia Reads: Under Yohannes' direction, the organization plants libraries for children, publishes high-quality multi-lingual books and even operates a Donkey Mobile Library, which serves rural children who don't otherwise have access to books.

In April, Ethiopia Reads celebrated a whole week under the motto "Ethiopia will Stretch Her Hands to Books" dedicated to creating public awareness about and stressing the need for reading.

When The Reporter talked to him during the book week in April, Yohannes said that the response to the donkey mobile library had been encouraging. "It serves a lot of children. They like the donkeys, they love petting them and at the same time coming and taking a book, siting under a tree reading. It's a very simple operation but it is serving a great purpose."

The cart carries stools for kids to sit on while reading outdoors. "We have only forty stools, but more than a hundred kids show up at a time. So, most of them sit on the grass or bare earth to read and they don't care." What he has noticed is that children really love reading. They like holding books in their own hands, turning pages, looking at pictures. Books fascinate them. "And those who come to the donkey mobile library, the reading centers in Awassa and Addis Ababa, are already hooked to reading."

Yohannes spent nearly two decades in the US, where he worked as a children's librarian in San Francisco. In 2003, Yohannes returned to Ethiopia to pursue his dream of building a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books. A librarian, writer, reader and lover of books, Yohannes has introduced books to tens of thousands of children in Ethiopia, a country where libraries and books for children simply do not exist.

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