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Is Books for Oliver a true story?
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Books for Oliver has a factual basis, but the characters are the authors' own.
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Several years ago, elementary schoolteacher Lee Rambo accompanied her husband on a medical mission trip to Kenya. While he worked in a hospital, she assisted a third grade teacher in the local public elementary school. She learned what Oliver learns: that students were required to pay fees and purchase their own textbooks in order to attend school.
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One day while Lee was teaching, the principal called all the students into the courtyard, read the names of those who had not purchased their books, and sent them home until they had the necessary materials. This event - and stories she heard of the lengths many real-life students went to to get the money for their textbooks - inspired Lee and her co-author, Jim Larkin, to write Books for Oliver.
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