Library – Open Hearts Big Dreams

LITTLE GIRL’S BEAUTIFUL DREAM BECOMING A REALITY

Ellenore Angelidis — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:43:01 +0000

BOOKS BY AND FOR ETHIOPIANS WIN MORE INTERNATIONAL AWARDS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: IBBY Ethiopia: Yoseph Ayalew / phone: 251 965 696 969 / 911 227 650 / email: yosephopenheartbigdreams@gmail.com OHBD: Ellenore Angelidis / phone: 425-295-8841 / email: ellenore@openheartsbigdreams.org December 2025 – Open Hearts Big Dreams (OHBD) started because a little…

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The Gift of a Book

Ellenore Angelidis — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 04:43:56 +0000

by Mesfin H. Beshir In the quiet town of Shashemane, Ethiopia, there lived a parent named Shewangizaw Tesfaye. He had two bright children who loved stories but had never owned a book of their own. Most evenings, Shewangizaw would gather them under the shade of a big sycamore tree and tell tales he remembered from his parents and grandparents—about lions with golden manes, rivers that sang…

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Making Big Dreams Happen with Rotary

Ellenore Angelidis — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 18:40:59 +0000

In 2024, we celebrated seven years since publishing our first titles. Back then, we believed the most important thing we needed to do was create the content, big, beautiful early readers in heart languages celebrating the stories and culture of Ethiopia. We were right and we were wrong. The content is at the heart of our mission, but the books must also get into reader’s hands. Given that our self…

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Conserving the Beauty of Ethiopia — A Legacy of Love and Working Together

Ellenore Angelidis — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 18:27:46 +0000

Ethiopia is a country full of animals that can’t be found anywhere else in the world—and other amazing animals as well. But many of those animals could easily disappear forever. Majestic black lion populations, for example, have declined almost 90%, with only small populations clinging to life in pockets of Ethiopian wilderness. One conservationist who studies them says, “It’s not just the lions…

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IBBY Ethiopia and Open Hearts Big Dreams Announce Exciting New International Developments

Ellenore Angelidis — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 17:56:25 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Yoseph Ayalew phone: 251 965 696 969 / 911 227 650 / email: yosephopenheartbigdreams@gmail.com Ellenore Angelidis phone: 425-295-8841 / email: ellenore@openheartsbigdreams.org IBBY Ethiopia and Open Hearts Big Dreams Announce Exciting New International Developments March 2024 – The Ethiopian Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY…

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A New Library, A New Language for OHBD-RSG Books, More Big Dreams!

Ellenore Angelidis — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 04:38:40 +0000

Debtsa is a small agricultural community in the high mountains of southwest Ethiopia. It’s a hard 2-day drive from Addis Ababa, mostly on dirt roads. It is beautiful, it is remote. It’s challenging to get there, it’s challenging to stay there, and it’s especially challenging to leave. A piece of my heart is planted there as firmly as the enormous ficus tree that stands in the center of the…

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Celebrating Jane Kurtz IBBY Reading Promoter Award and her volunteer efforts with OHBD – Blog Post Three the Creative Process for OHBD Ready Set Go Books Project

Ellenore Angelidis — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 22:31:37 +0000

Process and Creative are often oxymorons. But with this project we needed to make them play nice together. We need to be creative without losing sight of our goals to create many culturally appropriate bilingual books for children in Ethiopia and beyond. And we needed process that would overwhelm or undermine being creative especially since much of our team are volunteers and don’t work…

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Celebrating Jane Kurtz IBBY Reading Promoter Award and her volunteer efforts with OHBD – Blog Post Two WHY OHBD Ready Set Go Books Project Started

Ellenore Angelidis — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:49:46 +0000

Creating children’s books is not an easy endeavor. My first children’s books took 10 years from writing the story, thinking I would illustrate it but not finding the time, then finding a busy illustrator and working through all the different versions to finally teaching myself to self-publish and releasing it into the world. Jane has written many children’s books as an award-winning author and…

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A Book’s Tale

Ellenore Angelidis — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 20:00:03 +0000

Hi! My title is Little Lion. My sentences are short because I like to teach kindergarten children who are just learning to put sounds to words. One of my best features is the colorful pictures on my pages. The children love looking at my pictures! They invite them into the story about life in Ethiopia. I am part of a large family of children’s books called Ready-Set-Go books for all reading…

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OHBD Language Preservation – Dizin Children’s Books for Maji Ethiopia: “an amazing treasure”

Ellenore Angelidis — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 18:23:42 +0000

How do we do it—pull meaning from symbols on paper, or from bits of light and dark in flickering electric impulses? This miracle is called reading. I learned to read in Maji, in deep southern Ethiopia. My mother taught me in my own childhood language of English. As I filled workbooks at our dining room table, I heard Ethiopian children in the little school nearby chanting their reading lessons…

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