Daffodils in Spring
Pamela Morsi
More Than Words
Bestselling authors & Real-life heroines
Each and every one of us has the ability to effect change—to make our world a better place. The key is to begin in our own backyards, look at needs within our communities and then decide to do something about them. The dedicated women selected as this year’s recipients of Harlequin’s More Than Words award have changed lives, one good deed at a time. To celebrate their accomplishments, bestselling authors have written stories inspired by these real-life heroines. In this book, Pamela Morsi honors the work of Karen Thomson, Founder of Literature for All of Us.
We hope More Than Words inspires you to get in touch with the real-life heroine living inside of you.
Thank you for your interest in the Harlequin More Than Words program
Dear Reader,
For many years Harlequin Books has been a leader in supporting and promoting causes that are of concern to women and celebrating ordinary women who make extraordinary differences in the lives of others. Through Harlequin More Than Words, we annually honor women for their compassionate dedication to those that need it most, and donate $10,000 to their chosen causes.
We are proud to highlight our current Harlequin More Than Words award recipients by telling you about them and, with the help of some of the biggest names in women’s fiction, creating wonderfully entertaining and moving fictional short stories based on these women and their causes. Within the following pages you will find a heartwarming story written by Pamela Morsi—one of our two free e-books available at www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com. Be sure to look for Meryl Sawyer’s Worth the Risk, our second story also available free on-line. Three additional stories written by Carly Phillips, Donna Hill and Jill Shalvis can be found on the bookshelf of your favorite bookstore in More Than Words, Volume 7. All five of these stories are beautiful tributes to the Harlequin More Than Words award recipients who inspired them, and we hope they will touch your heart and inspire the real-life heroine in you.
Thank you for your support; all proceeds from the sale of More Than Words, Volume 7 will be returned to the Harlequin More Than Words program so we can assist more causes of concern to women. And you can help even more by learning about and getting involved with the charities highlighted by Harlequin More Than Words. Together we can make a difference!
Sincerely,
Donna Hayes
Publisher and CEO
Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Literature for All of Us
Karen Thomson
When Karen Thomson opens a book, she is certain of one thing: by turning a page, she is opening herself up to laughter, tragedy, beauty and a profound and deep understanding of how other people think, feel and exist.
She is opening herself up to the world and all of its potential.
Karen is the founder and executive director of Literature for All of Us, a charitable organization that reaches out to between 500 and 600 disadvantaged teens in the Chicago area each year with thought-provoking book groups. Most groups are made up of teen girls struggling with everything including domestic violence, poverty, teen pregnancy and faltering grades.
Karen is convinced that by giving teens a safe place to explore the world and speak their mind about a book they’ve read, they will gain confidence—and with confidence comes change.
“I can’t tell you what it feels like to look in on a group and see everybody’s head buried in a book, because I know what the alternative is,” she says, sounding perpetually energized and excited. “So this is really good.”
Falling in love with her girls
Karen’s own path to the present has been paved with fabulous books, thoughtful discussions and two epiphanies.
The first happened while having dinner with friends back in 1979 and musing over whether she would go back to work after staying home with the kids for eight years. Finally, one friend turned to her and asked point-blank what Karen really wanted. She thought for a moment, then answered, “If I could do anything, I want to be a book group leader for women. And you know what? I’m going to do it.”
For the next sixteen years, Karen, who has a B.A. in English Literature from Wheaton College and a Master of Arts in Teaching English from Northwestern University, introduced hundreds of female readers to Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin and Judy Chicago as her book group business grew by word of mouth. She hosted groups in colleges, retirement homes and in Barnes & Noble bookstores. She ran women’s retreats (“We talked intensely about our mothers in the woods,” she says) and would have kept chugging along if it hadn’t been for a friend who suggested she branch out to disadvantaged teens. Karen wasn’t so sure. She had taught school for a short while before having her own kids and wondered if it would be the right fit.
It was.
Karen volunteered to lead a book group for teen mothers at the Illinois Department of Human Services. That first week she walked into the room with some trepidation and a stack of Maya Angelou poetry under her arm. Only one problem: The fifteen girls whizzed through the three poems she’d prepared—and still had over an hour of time to fill. The solution? Have the teens write their own poetry.
“I noticed when they read their poems, their body language changed significantly,” Karen says now. “They were proud of themselves.”
Word got out about the transforming and fun book group and by the next week attendance doubled.
“I fell in love with these girls by the second week,” she says. “I just realized that they enjoyed the group so much and it was exactly what they needed. They were reading and writing. They were creating. It was about them.”
For ten weeks the young women read two books and opened up about their lives. They read parts of the books aloud to keep everyone on the same page and also to increase their reading skills. The teens wrote short pieces about their children’s hair and other personal topics and kept a strict “no putdown” policy about each other’s reading or writing. As their confidence grew, their disciplinary referrals dropped at school.
That’s when epiphany number two hit.
“I thought, Oh my God. This is the rest of my life,” says Karen. “I saw it unroll before me.”
She launched Literature for All of Us in 1997 with a mandate to grow a community of readers, poets and critical thinkers.
More to be done
Today, Literature for All of Us has facilitated more than 200 book groups, reaching more than 5,800 young people. It employs five book group leaders, a collection of fabulous young women who see the world as Karen does and keep her mission alive. While Karen fundraises and designs the programs, they head out to Chicago schools to run groups for teen girls and boys. Twenty percent of all book group members are boys now, a program that started after many girls said they wanted their partners and boyfriends to start reading, too.
Members keep the books they read so they can build their own libraries, but just as often they pass them around to friends and family. The organization is also committed to teaching the magic of the written word to young children. Its Children’s Literature for Parenting program introduces parents to relevant and award-winning kids books they can read at home.
Karen remembers one young mother she invited to a fundraising event who agreed to talk about the charity.
“I have a son and I never read to him,”