Library exchanges books with Taiwan

By GEORGE MOORE

The Cupertino Library held a ceremony April 1 in its Community Room displaying artwork and storybooks from its sister library in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. The Hsin-Chu Municipal Library sponsored an art contest for primary grade students, and sent a dozen framed colorful drawings and paintings--winners of the contest--that will be placed on display in the children's room.

An exchange program that began late in 1999 involved Sedgwick Elementary School, which held class projects in grades three through five for the program. Its students created illustrated book reports based on American folklore. Yuhfen Diana Wu, library commissioner and reference librarian at San Jose State University, personally delivered almost 50 of them to the sister library. In exchange, the sister library sent a shipment of children's books and illustrated storybooks.

Wu said the theme of the drawings and paintings of this latest exchange was heritage. The artwork included a fish market, historical buildings, the East Gate of the city, a fish harbor, and scenes from a glass blowing festival held last year. Many of them are explosions of color and visually stimulating.

"I was thrilled when she said these were for us," Wu said.

About 25 Chinese language storybooks about Taiwanese festivals, holidays and folk tales were included and will be added to the Cupertino collections. Wu said the books feature phonetic symbols next to the Chinese characters, because pronunciation is the first thing learned in school. Learning the roughly 10,000 Chinese characters is a far cry from the 26 letters of the English alphabet.

When Wu lived in Taiwan, she said English education did not begin until junior high grades and said it was difficult at that age.

"Now they want to start it in first grade," Wu said. "That's why the public library wants to enhance its collections in English."

The books will help to facilitate young children in Hsin-Chu to learning English. Wu said the plan is to send some pictorial types of English/Chinese dictionaries, children's storybooks in English and some talking books--books that include audio cassette tapes.

Kathy Stakey, who is on the library commission, said Friends of the Library, would pay for the cost of the books through funds raised by used book sales--books that were donated from the community. Friends held a book sale last February and are having another one on May 18 and 19 and again in October.

"I'm really excited that we're continuing our relationship with this sister library because it means so much to our community," Stakey said. She added that, coincidentally, Hsin-Chu is also a sister city of Cupertino.

The Cupertino Library is the only library in northern California commissioned by the United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science in the Sister Library program to celebrate the new millennium, said May Ann Wallace, Cupertino community librarian.

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