California/Canadian-Media: Dr. Marcia Ann Mims Coppertino, the author of the book, “How Children can be Everything – Story Book Hour” discusses with Asha Bajaj in an E-mail interview what motivated her to write the book, about real education, future of children and other features.
Asha to Marcia: Your book, “How Children can be Everything – Story Book Hour” is anticipated to be out in the month of June. What inspired you to write this book?
Marcia: I was inspired to write the book because I saw what COVID-19, rioting, looting, and other acts of wholesale hatred had just about ruined our country and how no one spoke of the trauma and fear these actions had on our nation’s children. I kept reading about the horror but no one in power in the land spoke of how the nation would face up to the trauma and mental health issues relating to children. The children had no hiding place and no cover beyond the house and this led to domestic violence and other dangerous environments they had to endure. No school, no teachers to hug them, no playing in the streets…all gone. The fire lit communities and raised guns, and ignorance rocked a nation, children did not and still do not understand.
Our children were left mentally and emotionally naked and no one knows when recovery will safely return. This led me to think of our youth who are incapable of seeing their destiny in the world as we know it today.
The present happenings and gloomy situation of nation of which children are an integral part, inspired me to write about this book to awaken the parents of their primary duties to their children, to give quality time to their children, to bond with them, and to understand them better and guide them to the noble path of life.
As a child did you ever get to enjoy this storybook hour? Please elaborate on your memories about this.
When I was a child our home had one small bookcase in the living room with about 20 books in it. We were not allowed to touch, feel or read the books so I spent most of my time thinking and dreaming about what the books were talking about. When I discovered the library 4 blocks from home, I would leave school, run to the library and stay until 10 pm when the ladies would watch me as I ran over the railroad tracks to home at closing times with an armful of books. The Watts Library became like a second home to me and I was always around the world in towns, countries, and cities I could not pronounce but the books changed my life! I was free in a book.
In your practical life have you ever indulged with children in a storybook hour? If so, what kind of stories did you narrate to them and the morals behind these stories.
Yes, in my early college days, I would visit schools and read to children during their lunch periods. Later in my working years, I would visit students in the Youth Business Alliance program and give life examples of how I made it over. I would give more than a conversation and would go deep inside to share and show what personality, inner strength, and teachers meant to me on my journey to stay alive long enough to be a blessing and an anchor to others in life. I wanted the students to see me, bond with me, walk with me, tally with me more than just hear me talk. I wanted them on a red carpet of love with me all the way. After all, love never fails to share, heal, and give hope where hope does not always exist or show up in time to offer salvation of any kind.
Can you comment on the present system of education and your thoughts to change it?
The truth of the matter not told by the media giants is that enrollment is down like never before in the universities. Clothes, fast cars, drugs, and a host of other deterrents have enveloped youth and a sprinkling of educated ones who have no desire to walk in the gangland of today to reach the fallen children is pathetic. Most parents today are boasting and bragging about their graduated youth in caps and gowns and have not guided their youth about helping their unfortunate and lost brothers and sisters. Most have never given one thought about what their youth should do in the future. Just get a degree. Wow. Look out the window today and see how degreed individuals have turned out. Big check. Big rocks. High flames and fancy cars. I always thought that one’s success does not count, unless we all make it. Most move out of neighborhoods and never look back. That constitutes a fake success and a demonic way of life to grab and go. Get all I can get and go. Forsake grandma and then run. This is the sad reality of the educated. Did any stand against the looting, killing, burning?
I realized that children need more than this world’s education. The education of children starts at a very tender age with parents giving them quality time and inspiring their thinking with noble thoughts and deeds. Real education lies not in degrees but in their service to the nation in helping others to uplift them.
Elon Musk, an entrepreneur and business magnate and one of the richest people in the world, is even saying he would rather hire those with skills rather than those with a degree. Education of the heart and for heart’s sake is the only way to exist and grow in today’s world. Education will fail you in a heartbeat but love never fails. Educated individuals may not give you a drink of water while you are dying but one of heart will.
The title of the book is suggestive of both endless possibilities for children as well as fantasy land. Can you throw some light on the theme/themes of the book?
Yes, whatever a child dreams about, talks about, or pretends to be, sets him or her up for a life of endless possibilities. The books bring to life characters worth imitating, who spin tales of courage and influence and motivate readers.
Just hearing or reading about them with or without animations opens the heart and soul to say, “I have found my path in life and no one can take it away because it is tucked in my heart to follow.” The books bring to life characters worth imitating, who spin tales of courage and influence and motivate readers.
All of us are bound as agents of light and balls of love and love always will lead the way to one’s true destiny on earth and beyond. If I feel it, I can do it, if I hear and see the beauty within, I can follow, if I fall down I know I can rise, books are instruments of direction with a conclusion we all have the power to create.
The title of the book also suggests the dreams and aspirations of reaching one’s goal in life. Does this relate to your childhood dreams?
Yes, I wanted to be a doctor and a lawyer all at the same time based on dreams of mom and dad, as well as my own aspirations. I read all the medical books I could find left in a shed by a driver who handed these to me before he passed. I pretended to do surgeries on stuffed animals and by age of thirteen, I was almost as sharp as any MD (Doctor of Medicine). My life took a turn at the age of 16 when I received a full ride to Stanford University. At that time I was pregnant. Mom said, “well, there is your MD in your stomach.” But I was not deterred. I made the choice to have my daughter and decided to study law and excelled until the university I was enrolled in had shut down. But I was determined. I went straight to three to four colleges and persevered in tax law. The road was tough and dangerous but in spite of all this, I excelled and was back in law school, studying for Chartered Accountant (CA) and New York City Bar Association (NYC Bar). These and other degrees have carried me thus far.
I tell all living beings never to give up, advise them to find an angel friend to who you can tell all about your dreams and aspirations. These angel friends will fall in love with you, befriend you and help take care of you.
Over the span of 25 years, my dreams have come true all because I have reached back for the cold, scared hand of another and asked them to follow me with a promise to help lead the way. I love people and they love me!
The blend of reality and fantasy to reach one’s goals is a good way of inspiring children. Such stories also contain morals. Did you have such dreams in your childhood? Did you receive such moral lessons blended with mythology during your childhood?
No, I was not the favorite at my home. I used to pick up a broomstick and when a book was not in my hands I was singing and lip singing to spiritual songs, Aretha Franklin and other soloists of my day, and eventually, I ended up for one-year training by Broadway artists. I always felt there was more behind the skies and I stumbled along to find and reach this element.
This book of yours is a waking call for all the parents in today’s busy life when children are left to the care of others or to technological entertainment and miss the most beautiful opportunity of their lifetime, the storybook hour. Can you comment on this?
Yes, it truly is because a mother’s and father’s voices are considered in the universe to be the voice of God. When children miss the guidance of their parents and do not hear their voice of reason, advice on right actions, about light in a darkened room, children’s psyche is irreparably damaged. The spoken voice in a child’s heart is the words from their creator, Mom, and Dad who show their children the light in the dark with their loving care and advice at every stage of their tender age. The parents should know the dreams and aspirations of their children. They should be aware of what they read as this tender age is the molding stage of their lives. Not technology, not the police, not the graveyard, and not terror from outside can be their guiding light. Nurses in the newborn rooms can testify to the value, power, and health of a mother’s voice, and then the father’s voice.
The storybook hour gives the parents to bond with their children, to understand them better, and to guide them towards a true path of life.
What are your thoughts about the children who were uncared for? What are you and your organization doing to raise awareness in the nation about the children caught in the midst of this uncanny situation?
If you do not make up your mind and heart to be concerned with children of all races and creeds, we all lose. This is because the next generation as millennials will find a way to progress in the world only by peace, acceptance with an understanding of one another. They will not work together or formulate a system to further earth’s goals. I think real mothers now are realizing their folly of getting out in the workforce under the guise of needed 1-2 paychecks to make it. This resulted in the children being left to the care of strangers all day long. These strangers knew least about these children, who were left uncared as far as their inner growth was concerned. This was the worst thing to happen in America. These children, history shows, soon became estranged with parents and found no reason not to start killing parents. Parents at that time did not care to find out they were living with strangers and wanton kids. The houses soon became empty but the streets were filled with gangs and false alliances. Women took the jobs and the place of men and the male presence in the family and now the price is being paid in the cities and states across the nation. The stats on black abortions tell the story.
As an organization, Coppertino and Associates Consulting Group (CAACG) is devoted to the universal preservation of life and sustenance of all known and unknown life forms our main goal is to help unify the minds and hearts of those who come after us. They are today’s children.
How long did you take to complete it and where would you get this book published?
The book took 2 months to write which really had been laid bare in my heart during the pandemic. All the time I was thinking where the children were in all of this?
The book is self-published to retain the voice of the author and the intent for writing such content and will arrive soon at amazon.com through formerly Create Space now kindle.
Children tend not to have a voice in the world due to age limitations and the parental control of the children. Parents are struggling to make sense of what is going on in the world that children face but do understand when it comes to children. We now also run into a scene unheard of and unwanted by many parents regarding the world’s unkindness toward children
When are your other books anticipated to be out? Please tell me your future plans for writing books.
The Face and the Personality of Cancer will be out in September of this year.
My future plans of writing books will continue as I look out on the world’s horizon and see the souls and hearts of children being led to the slaughterhouse of new ideals and demonic controlled forces bent on the destruction of the minds and souls of children. We must protect the generation with us and the one behind us through prophecy or not.
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