Tales of the Arabian Nights

In 2006 a literacy project from Lahore in Pakistan won the Ibby Asahi Award. (see www.Ibby.org). It started as a static book bus in Lahore which was the first children's library in Pakistan by Basarat Kazim. The reason was not to simply distrubute books to children more deprived than we can imagine, but to teach them to read in a relaxed enjoyable way. The bookbus was called "Alif Laila", which means "the Arabian Nights". It became so successful that it spawned literacy projects that were used in schools and a purpose built children's library (de Silva, 2008). It has come full circle and now the project runs a children's mobile library called "the Storyteller" which travels the valleys of pakistan carrying books and stories (Burg 2008).