By Howard Pousner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Lots of authors will be reading at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend, sure, but so will angels, dogs, mermaids and even a mouse, whose back has the misfortune of being clenched in the jaws of a cat.

While the writers will be holding forth on more than a dozen stages across downtown Decatur, these other reading characters will be congregating inside Mingei World Arts, a Church Street import shop.

They're folk art figures from Oaxaca, a southern Mexican state long famed for fanciful and colorful wooden carvings. But beyond being cute and clever, and having the good timing to be available during the metro area's largest book event, they're also ambassadors of literacy.

A year ago, Mingei fund-raising paid for the opening of a one-room library in the hilly, hardscrabble town of La Union Tejalapam, where these carvings were created. In addition to setting aside 20 percent of proceeds from sales of the figures, the Decatur emporium staged a benefit concert featuring musician John McCutcheon and storyteller Carmen Deedy and solicited small cash donations.

All of that totaled less than $4,000, which doesn't sound like enough to stock a bookshelf much less open a library. But a dollar travels far in rural Mexico, especially under the direction of Libros Para Pueblos, a nonprofit organization that has opened 35 libraries across Oaxaca.

Mingei co-owner Ann VanSlyke and Linda Hanna, a retired schoolteacher and Libros volunteer, dreamed up the idea of commissioning the reading figures, and selling them as a children's library fund-raiser. In 2007, the two were driving the bumpy road to La Union, where VanSlyke was to pick up another bunch of carvings for her shop, when the brainstorm hit.

"We had been doing business in La Union for several years and the village had really snagged my heart," VanSlyke says. "It's a beautiful place, but quite poor. Until last summer when we opened the library, I had never met an adult in La Union who could read."

La Union is one of three Oaxacan centers renowned for folk art carving, along with San Martin Tilcajete and Arrazola, but the most remote and poorest. Most in the village, where chickens are underfoot and donkeys are tied to shade trees outside modest homes, are subsistence farmers who grow corn on rocky hilltops.

A handful of men there carve to supplement their farming -- that is, those who haven't migrated to the United States for menial work.

The copal wood carvings that emerge from the town are recognized as Oaxaca's most primitive, usually finished in transparent dyes instead of the paints that others have turned to.

"Unlike in other carving villages we work with, where carvers often have books with illustrations that they [refer to], I had never seen a book in the mostly bamboo and wood houses of La Union," VanSlyke says.

For less than $2,000, Libros Para Pueblos can open a library like La Union's and maintain it for a year.

Villagers build the tables, chairs and shelves, with donated funds paying for the materials. Libros provides 300 books and trains locals to run the circulation system, a novelty since most school libraries there do not allow books to be checked out.

"These are mostly picture books that have limited text," says Hanna in an e-mail from Oaxaca. "We have found in many cases that the reading level of the parents is often just about this level, so they are often as interested in the books as the children."

VanSlyke also has supplied books to a high school in a neighboring village where a fortunate few La Union students continue their studies after grade school.

The 11 La Union carvers that Mingei has regularly commissioned needed little persuasion to create an array of reading creatures for the shop. Mingei currently has about 70 available, ranging from $35-$400.

Their popularity in Decatur means that the store has been able to increase its orders at a time when Oaxaca is suffering due to a period of political unrest followed by a tourism downturn.

With VanSlyke making yearly buying trips, and Hanna living in Oaxaca, the Decatur shop can take custom orders, such as the customer who wanted a kangaroo mom and the joey in her pouch reading a book together.

The artists come up with plenty of their own clever ideas, such as the mockingbird who was studying "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The connection only stands to get stronger during this year's Decatur Book Festival, which includes a Skippyjon Jones Mariachi Brunch at the El Tesoro restaurant on Sunday. Proceeds from the event celebrating the sword-fighting kitten, a favorite children's character, will benefit Libros Para Pueblos ($25 for kids includes author Judy Schachner's latest Skippyjon adventure; parents pay just for their meals).

Says VanSlyke: "We love that we are linking the Decatur community with the community of La Union."