“Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing” is a children’s book that tells the story of Amani, a young zebra living on the African plains who starts a chain reaction of kind gestures among the varieties of animals. Written by Tish Rabe and illustrated by Moka Celess, the book was created by the Trumbull Rotary Club for adults to share with children around the world, while introducing them to “The Four-Way Test” Rotarians use to make positive choices in their daily lives:
- Is it true?
- Is it fair?
- Will it build friendships?
- Will it be good for everyone?
Last Saturday, a launch party for the book, scheduled to be released on March 2, in time for Read Across America at Connecticut’s public schools, was held at the Trumbull, Conn., home of Beth Stoller, who came up with the idea.
“This little book, with your help, will now reach a whole new generation,” Stoller told her approximately 70 guests. “We’re here to celebrate how this book found its way into your hearts and into ours — and to ask you to keep sharing it with your friends and with your communities across the world.”
On Saturday, advance copies of the book were sold and Tish Rabe signed copies for guests.
Rabe is a children’s author who wrote over 200 books for Sesame Street, Disney and Dr. Seuss. She remembers submitting a rhyming children’s book to Random House in 1991.
“They rejected my book, but they asked me to write The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library, a series of books about science in rhyme for early readers,” she recalled. “It was a project Dr. Seuss wanted to do, but he died before the first book.”
Rabe started her own publishing company, Tish Rabe Books, in 2020, during COVID.
When she was presenting her Dr. Seuss books at a conference in 2017, Rabe met Stoller and the two women have been friends ever since.
During a phone conversation five years ago, they were looking at Tish’s website, when one of her books for the Pajama Program (now called Beyond Bedtime) caught Stoller’s eye: “Sweet Dreams Ahead Time for Bed.”
“That book is where this idea was conceived,” Stoller said. “It’s very similar to what our book is based on. It combines literacy, the warmth of reading time with child and parent and introduces the reader to a new organization.”
One of Stoller’s hopes for the Rotary Club’s book is that it will expose the adults reading it with their children to the club, inspiring them to become new Rotarians.
“This is a wonderful way to do it,” she said, “because if you reach the children, you reach their parents. We all believe in literacy. One of my favorite moments during the holidays with in-laws, I told them about the project and we were reading the book. My eight-year-old niece said, ‘can I see the book?’ and she started reading the book to me. There is nothing better than a child reading a book to you.”
Stoller sold the Trumbull Rotary Club on the idea to create “Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing” and a total of 26 Rotaries and one church, Unity Hill United Church of Christ in Trumbull, donated money to the project. The goal was to raise a total of $50,000 and just over $45,000 has been raised so far.
Rabe remembers the first donation. She was talking about the book to members of the Mystic Rotary. Everyone clapped at the end and a man came up to her and gave her three dollars. “He pushed it in my hand. He was in a walker, and he said, ‘I hope you make your book,'” she said with a smile.
Stoller said the sizes of the donations ranged from three dollars to contributions from four Legacy Leader Clubs, who donated $5,000 each, including Rotary Clubs from Middletown, Orange, Stratford and Trumbull.
So far, 10,000 copies of the book have been printed and thousands more are ready to go to children’s homes and into the libraries of many schools. It will be published in multiple languages.
Rotarians near and far
The Rotary Club of Monroe is among the clubs contributing to the project and a few of its members attended the launch party on Saturday.
“We’re just proud as a Rotary Club to support Trumbull and literacy is something we always support,” said Monroe Rotary Club President Ken Kellogg. “We donate the books for Read Aloud Day in the schools. The book has a powerful message in line with what Rotary is all about and it exposes children and families to Rotary. It’s a great project.”
Guests included many Rotarians from the area, some as far away as Ledyard. Joseph Shapiro, president of the Derby-Shelton Rotary Club and assistant district secretary, attended, as well as Dennis Wong, of the Westport Sunrise Rotary.
“I call myself a Rotarian peace builder,” Wong said. “It’s about kindness. Everybody can be a peace builder and peace begins with a smile. Rotary’s mission is to advance understanding, goodwill and peace. This book will address literacy and advance the idea of being nice to each other to get to a more peaceful place.”
In addition to the many representatives of area clubs, several officials from the Rotary’s District of Southern Connecticut 7980 also celebrated the new book.
“This project is not just a Trumbull project,” said District Governor Stephanie Philips. “This book is part of a larger initiative from the governor on literacy. It is a critical part. It has sustaining benefits for all of our students and all of our children, literacy at an early age and how it impacts childhood development. We have many schools who have dedicated this book to their libraries.”
“Beth, this was her creation,” Philips added of Stoller. “She met Tish and sold the club on the idea. I loved it. This is a huge Rotary investment in our children. This is why I got behind it.”
Robert Friend, past district governor, and Julia Kushigian-Secor, the district governor nominee, also expressed support for the project. Friend praised Stoller for her hard work of promoting the idea.
“The baseline is the four-way-test for Rotarians,” Friend said. “I think it’s really going to help tell the story of Rotary to another generation and it will really help to grow Rotaries. Kindness and caring, peace, being able to be at peace with yourself. I think that’s the first step. We’re going to promote it like heck.”
“These are the Rotary values,” Kushigian-Secor said. “That is what we share with children, because we want them to understand the beauty of caring for each other and of service to each other, even when we don’t agree with them.”
Inspired by Uganda
Rabe said she wanted to write a story based on the Four-Way Test for Rotarians, which club members recite before every meeting. When Stoller went on a service trip to Uganda with the Trumbull Rotary, it gave Rabe the idea to set the story in Africa.
“I was so excited to do a book in Africa, which I’d never done before,” Rabe said. “I started to tell Beth, ‘I think it should be in Africa and kids love penguins and kids love zebras.’ On the train going into New York I opened a magazine and this was the picture of the week, a little girl and a zebra, who was learning how to care and share.”
Rabe went online to search for African girls’ names for her two main characters.
“Amani was the first one that came up,” she said. “It means peace in Swahili.”
After naming the main character, Rabe chose Samara for the zebra’s mother’s name.
“It took like three years,” Stoller said of the book project. “It took a long time. It was a journey and it was a wonderful journey. We were asking people to believe in something that we couldn’t even give them, so I was walking around with this Pajama Project book saying, ‘see, this is what it’s going to look like.'”
Stoller said she went to over 40 clubs, while successfully garnering support from 26.
The book has a song at the end entitled, “Kindness is Caring,” which is sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Party guests sang it together before Stoller made a champagne toast.
“Today, I invite you to raise a glass to the power of believing in a simple idea,” she said. “To the joy of working together for something bigger than ourselves and to the countless children whose lives will be touched in the story years ahead. Here’s to kindness and friendship and caring and sharing, and here’s to all of you for helping this dream take flight. Cheers.”
Those interested in buying a copy of the book, should email Beth Stoller at [email protected].
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