Eric Walters speaking with a students at Robert Moore School on September 26, 2019
A Canadian author is sharing his love for reading with students across the Rainy River district.
Eric Walters wrapped up a three-day visit to area schools Wednesday with a stop at Robert Moore school.
Walters has written 115 books.
He says it started when he was a teacher and his students were expressing disappointment with a lack of good reading material in school.
“I wrote it for them. At the end of the year, one of the boys said to me ‘your book is not as bad as most of the garbage we’re forced to read why don’t you have it published. I sent it off to 6 publishers. Five rejected me, one accepted me,” says Walters.
Many of his books are based on real-life experiences. Walters also runs an orphanage in Kenya he started when researching for one of his books.
He received some welcome support when he visited when was at one area school.
“Donald Young and they donated $200. One-hundred dollars a day pays for one day of my orphanage. So that $200 donation by Donald Young is responsible for November 7-8 of this coming year. They’re the parents of our orphanage,” says Walters.
You can help out by going to the website creationofhope.com. Walters also uses some of the proceeds of book sales to fund operations.
The multi-award-winning author also encourages young people to do more reading, especially those from Canadian authors.
He launched a summer reading program this past year inviting schools to loan out books to students over the summer.
“Because if kids don’t have books in the summer, their literacy rates slide. I’m also a steering committee person on something called the I Read Canadian National Read Day. We’re gonna try to 4,000 schools across country to simultaneously read Canadian books next February 19,” says Walters.
You can learn more about the books Walters has published on his website by clicking here.
