Chinaberry.com
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at Chinaberry.com
from Chinaberry's founder, Ann Ruethling
When Chinaberry began over 22 years
ago, I personally handled each order - with my 2-year-old daughter
Elizabeth's help. Elizabeth was my first child, and it's because
of her that Chinaberry, Inc. came to be. Well - she AND the fact
that living in Oregon with a toddler during a winter when it rained
13 FEET in five months resulted in major cabin fever. This
cabin fever was successfully endured thanks to library books (and
baking bread nearly every day). Now if you are a parent, you know
that NOTHING is good enough for your first child! In my case,
I was disturbed by the lack of caring and respect expressed in
many of the children's books we found at the library, not to mention
the sexism and violence. (Remember the Mother Goose nursery rhyme
about the old lady who lived in the shoe and beat her kids soundly
before she put them to bed?) Before long, I found I had another
mission in life (other than eating home-made bread): to search
out books for Elizabeth that were positive and uplifting, because
it looked as if the sun would never shine, and we'd be reading
books together forever (or at least until global warming caused
the ocean's water level to swallow up this little coastal Oregon
town once and for all). Much work went into that little project
of mine. I subscribed to numerous children's literature publications
and scouted out as many libraries as I could. I started keeping
notes on index cards about the books I liked and at what age I
wanted to introduce Elizabeth to each book. By the time my stack
of index cards was three or four inches high, I began to realize
how much time and energy had gone into this mission of mine. And
I realized there were probably a lot of other concerned parents
who could greatly benefit from my stack of 3x5's. I felt that
if parents could just feed all those wonderful books into the
hearts and minds of their children, the world would have to become
a better place. Thus, Chinaberry was conceived - at first as a
free service, and then as a catalog business to make it easier
for parents to buy the books I was telling them about. Today our
catalog is mailed three times a year to more than 3.5 million
people worldwide, and we sell more than one million books annually.
What often makes me believe this is all just a pleasant dream
is that I never sat down to think of what I could do to make money,
back during those days of howling wind and rain in Oregon. What
I thought about was filling a need I had: to give my child wonderful,
uplifting reading experiences that would color her whole life
in a positive way and to help her to grow into a caring, gentle
person. Not only have I found that thousands of others (our customers)
have the same vision for their children, but also that when something
is somehow "meant to be," it manages to jump any hurdle it finds
in its way. My hope is that Chinaberry continues to thrive in
the same spirit it has since that first trusting customer sent
$18.93 to a PO Box in Port Orford, Oregon. My vision is that Chinaberry
remains as intimate and focused as those days when I packed a
few orders on the kitchen table with my toddler.
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