Leyla Marie Fasika Angelidis, a 14-year-old young Ethiopian American author has co-authored 8 bilingual books featuring stories about life in Ethiopia. She was born in Ethiopia in 2008, and was brought to Seattle as a baby. A few years later Leyla learned from her mom that children in Ethiopia don’t always have the chance to go to school, learn to read, and some children have never held a book in their hands. A decade later Leyla has helped author three books for children in Ethiopia. Her mom, Ellenore, leads Open Hearts Big Dreams (OHBD), a non-profit organization that creates, publishes and distributes bilingual culturally appropriate children’s books. With the help of Jane Kurtz (award-winning children’s book author and who grew up in Ethiopia as a child) as creative director, their focus is to increase literacy and a love for reading in Ethiopia and beyond. This past year Partners With Ethiopia jumped on board to help get more of these delightful books printed and distributed in Ethiopia.
Leylas books are available in multiple languages including Amharic. She has accomplished all of this with the help of Jane, her writing coach and who heads the OHBD creative team that coordinates writing, illustration, design, and Amharic translation of the books. The rapidly growing list of titles includes over 125 books in eleven languages, with more than 300,000 books distributed in Ethiopia since 2017 and plans to grow that number to one million. These books are printed in Ethiopia to help build local capacity and to make them more affordable. Another 30,000 copies of these books have been distributed globally through print on demand. Sales of these books help fund the overall program.
For more information about OHBD Ready Set Go Books, visit OHBD-RSGBooks.com/
