Mary Grace Coffman, age 8, may be the world’s youngest librarian. The Signal Mountain thirdgrader and her father, pediatrician Allen Coffman, have resolved to help provide a library for a school in Nigeria. “I was amazed that they didn’t have a library,” said Mary Grace, who attends Nolan Elementary and enjoys mystery books. “I told my dad, ‘It’s not a school without a library.’”
The Coffmans came to know about the school through a family friend, Chi Ekwinye, an America-educated Nigerian who earned a doctorate from the University of Georgia and returned to Africa to establish a church-sponsored orphanage, a school and a shelter for battered women.
Mary Grace said she and some of her friends have formed a little club they call “World Girls.” They write letters to the kids at the Right Steps School in Abia state Nigeria.
Dr. Coffman said he had read about relief agencies using old shipping containers as makeshift houses, and he had a brainstorm: Why not use one to make an instant library for the school in Africa?
His library-in-a-box idea is simple and elegant. The Coffmans have purchased a 40-foot cargo container, about three-quarters the size of a tractor-trailer truck, that they plan to stock with donated children’s books.
They hope to keep it on church property through the summer and install shelves inside along with a ventilation system. Exterior panels will be painted in bright colors.
The Coffmans have set up a network of drop points for families throughout the Chattanooga area to contribute books. When filled, the portable library could contain as many as 20,000 volumes, Dr. Coffman said.
The books will go to the 300-student Right Steps School in Nigeria, where the only books available now to children are textbooks, and there aren’t even enough of those to go around.
“They have no picture books, no first readers,” Dr. Coffman said. “As the kids develop and want to learn on their own, they have nothing to offer. So, some of the kids get disinterested in education.”
Dr. Coffman said he wanted to involve his daughters, Mary Grace and Anna Beth, 6, in the library project as a learning experience.
“The biggest thing is to add breadth to their perspective,” he said. “Not everybody grows up on Signal Mountain and has a beautiful library.”
American kids are “swamped with media,” said Dr. Coffman, but the African children have few sources of information.
The Coffman children have begun gathering books at home. If several hundred families do the same in coming weeks, the library dream will become a reality.
E-mail Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.
Kennedy is the content editor of the Times Free Press Life sections and writes the “Life Stories” column. Previously, he was the first Sunday editor of the Times Free Press. Before Chattanooga’s newspapers were merged in 1999, Kennedy was the coordinating editor of the Chattanooga Times, where he had previously been an education reporter, feature writer and team leader. His first newspaper job was as sports editor of the Cleveland (Tenn.) Daily Banner. Kennedy’s human ...
Thank you, Mary Grace. Gesture like this is what makes America beloved around the world and not war.
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