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9 Kilometers
by Claudio Aguilera
Age Range: 6-8
9 Kilometers
As a young boy sets out on his 9-kilometer – more than a five-mile journey to school – it is still dark and before the sun rises. He has a long and arduous journey ahead through the mountains and forest of Chile. He crawls under barbed wire fences, tramps through densely wooded areas, and navigates flowing rivers and fields of cattle in all weather. However, the boy doesn’t mind because these 9 kilometers or 15, 000 steps, (his teacher once told him that it takes 1,600 steps to walk a kilometer), will get him to school.
Chilean author Claudio Aguilera’s sparse poetic text, translated by Lawrence Schimel, shows the child noting the distance in metric terms via the speed at which different species travel – a snail can travel five meters in one hour which would take 70 days to travel 9 kilometers, but for a Puma, it would take barely seven minutes to go the same distance. He also measures the distance comparing what would fit into 9 kilometers from the 10 largest buildings in the world to 30 gigantic aircraft carriers or 90 football fields.
Some days the boy occupies his time on his long trek counting butterflies or lizards and his steps feel “as sweet as a handful of blackberries or a ripe apple and they pass as quickly as a shadow.” But sometimes there are days when the 9 kilometers “feels like a stone inside a worn-out shoe.”
Chilean artist Gabriela Lyon’s very visual watercolour illustrations use a sombre palette of colours to demonstrate the darkness of the earlier part of the journey but as daylight breaks through they become more vibrant. There is meticulous attention to detail particularly in the portrayal of animals such as the birds dotted throughout.
A useful explanation of metric and its equivalent imperial units is at the front of the book and at the back there is ‘Other Walkers Around the World’ with lovely small landscape images and a short paragraph about children from different countries who make long and difficult journeys to reach their school including China, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Keyna, Uruguay and Venezuela which was the inspiration for the book. There is also a double-page spread with small vignettes of all the birds that can be discovered in the text.
A simple, yet effective story carrying an important and powerful message - “We hope that their steps guide us towards the construction of a society in which education is a right and not a privilege.”






























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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