Mackintosh Williams, Homeless Boy Reads as Many Books Dispatch Article 1/14/2018

No book stays at the peak of his listing for long. Mackintosh Williams, also known as "Sci Fi Guy," reads at a pace too furious for him to maintain anything more than than a fleeting ranking of best-loved stories.

"I don't really take favorites, considering there's always something new," he said.

Instead, the 11-yr-one-time writes reviews and recommendations, the latest of which sit on a shelf in the children'south surface area of the Columbus Metropolitan Library's main site Downtown. Library employees made several copies of the "Official Sci Fi Guy Suggestions past Mackintosh Williams" and happily gave him the green light to arrange a display of books from his beloved science-fiction genre.

"A lot of kids will talk about books, but he's like an ambassador of books," said children's librarian Lisa Dickson. "When he came in here, he simply knocked my socks off. He's incredibly intelligent."

Mackintosh moves virtually the big library with purpose and ease, similar a kid who really, really wants to be there. He loves the space and the light and the computers. But he tin can't stand the pain that crosses his female parent's face whenever they talk virtually the other reason for coming so oftentimes.

"When people are homeless," Mackintosh said, "they experience over-pressured."

In his mom, he sees a daily boxing to continue religion and determination from being swamped by frustration and sadness. In some of the other kids at the homeless shelter, he sees misdirected anger and outbursts, similar the other day when a handful of boys pelted him with wads of wet paper.

"I try to avoid problems, but it's like problems are running after me," Mackintosh said.

They have a harder time catching him when he reads. Mackintosh immerses himself in tales of robot armies and conflicting hordes, golden capes and galactic hot dogs. He checks out stacks of books at a time and stows them carefully in the spare, windowless room he and his mom share at the YMCA Van Buren Middle, a big shelter on the Westward Side with separate areas for men, women and families with children.

Lx-viii families, including 130 children, were living in the shelter — i of two family shelters in the metropolis — equally of Wednesday.

"This is one moment in time," Shameikia Smith, a senior director at Van Buren, said she wants the kids to believe. "This is non your whole life. This is a chapter."

Mackintosh does his all-time to go on up hope. In the concurrently, he turns to other narratives.

"When you're reading a book, no one knows where y'all live," Dickson said. "You live in that story."

Seeking a new star

Ester Campbell, Mackintosh's mom, has known hardship much of her life. "My dad was addicted to drugs, and my mom passed abroad," she said. "I grew up in the system. But I even so wanted to instill the proper values in Mackintosh. I knew he wasn't your average kid."

Mackintosh walked early, talked early and barely had to exist taught to read. He seemed to quickly grasp the difference between right and wrong, and relished taking a stand up.

"He has a moral compass," said Campbell, 32. "The fact that he wants for others what he wants for himself makes him a cute person. Adults can learn from children."

She and Mackintosh came to Columbus from New York City, where she had again fallen into homelessness, this time after losing a security job and failing in attempts to halt an eviction. Although she found more than work in New York, the pay wasn't great. Campbell felt exhausted past fruitless searches for an affordable place of their own. The chaos of temporary housing — first in a motel, then the shelter organisation — seemed never to requite way.

"They put us someplace different every 10 days," Campbell said.

She and Mackintosh packed up and boarded a bus to central Ohio last month in hopes of finding and reconnecting with an estranged sister who also had moved to the expanse. That hasn't proved easy, and in any event, "our short-term goal has to be for us to get out of the shelter and for him to get to a great schoolhouse," Campbell said. "He'southward so bright."

Campbell enrolled Mackintosh in an simple on the West Side, only she pulled him out and decided to look for a different school subsequently he said he was severely bullied.

"It was just unbelievable, all the problems," Mackintosh said. "Another child hit me in my rima oris and pushed some of my teeth back. People like violence, I judge, but violence should never be the choice."

Overwhelmed equally they are, Campbell and Mackintosh say they draw strength from their organized religion. Campbell'southward nativity mother was Jewish. "And I always wanted to experience closer to her," she said. "Then I began to embrace the Torah."

Surrendering to despair isn't an pick. "Sometimes I but want to become into a corner and brawl up and cry and scream," Campbell said. "Simply you tin't afford to be weak, because your child is looking at you."

Finding means to laugh

Every bit Laurie MacGillivray conducted enquiry at family homeless shelters in Los Angeles and Memphis, she marveled at families who, while seemingly everything around them had fallen apart, managed to maintain or develop good literacy habits.

They read religious texts, passed notes across the dinner tabular array, studied flashcards, discussed proficient books.

"When mothers and children were looking for means to normalize their lives, reading was a practiced way to do it," said MacGillivray, a literacy proficient and professor at the University of Memphis. "Reading lends stability. It also can be a style to create privacy, because ofttimes, if you're living in a shelter, you lot don't accept much."

And reading can help homeless children — for whom so many typical activities and possessions are beyond attain — level a field. "There'south no ane saying, 'Oh, yous can't read this book because you're homeless,'" MacGillivray said.

A kid such as Mackintosh might exist infrequent, but he's not unique in his desire to hone an interest that is his no matter what. "Every fourth dimension a homeless kid goes into a new school or a new environment — and I know kids who change schools more than than four times a year — they have to redefine themselves," MacGillivray said. "If he already has his area of expertise, he's ahead of the game."

Over a year, more than 250,000 children in the United States volition take stayed at a homeless shelter, co-ordinate to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Nearly 2,500 children were served in Columbus homeless shelters during the most-contempo fiscal twelvemonth.

Even those who fare well wind up with scars.

"The fact is, past the time a family unit has experienced homelessness, they have faced some devastating consequences," said Michelle Heritage, executive manager of the Community Shelter Lath. "We should say, as a country and a community, that no child should exist homeless. Period."

Resilient equally they are, kids often succeed in finding ways to express mirth and play and learn exterior their worst experiences. Mackintosh isn't terribly daunted. He doesn't complain about having to watch shows on his mom's phone instead of a goggle box, or pino for a real piano, or pout when Campbell has to say that, yes, $12 is likewise much for them to spend on a notebook.

He knows she doesn't like to deny him things. "I want you to be on the news," Mackintosh said suddenly, "every bit the nearly-cute woman in the world!"

Campbell playfully shoos him forth. Mackintosh zooms toward the eye of the children'south area, where he scopes a few books before sitting at a computer station. In addition to writing his book reviews, he's been working on creating a game.

"The angels come at the end," he said. "They assistance you and heal you."

rprice@dispatch.com

@RitaPrice

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Source: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2018/01/13/book-ambassador/14111575007/

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