Totto-Chan's Children: A Goodwill Journey to the Children of the World

Every year all over the world some 13 million children die needlessly of malnutrition and preventable illnesses. Children are also among the hardest hit in armed conflicts -- over 20 million have suffered from wars in the last ten years. The same children, of course, live, play, and grow up and try to have some fun, too.

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi is Japan's most beloved TV personality. She has also been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for over fifteen years. This book records the journeys she made in this important capacity to visit the world's most unfortunate children in fourteen countries from 1984 to 1996. Readers will be shocked by her description of a six-year-old, undernourished boy who could not think, speak, walk, or run. In Haiti she met a girl who sold herself for less than a dollar. "I'm so afraid I will get AIDS, but I have to eat tomorrow", she explained. No one will forget the Indian boy who wished her health and happiness as he lay dying of tetanus.

This book, however, is more than just a sad and sentimental report on the world's dying children. Kuroyanagi's undeniable and universal love for kids gives her a rare gift for seeing beyond their struggle for survival. Indeed, it is her familiar descriptions of children at play -- like all kids everywhere -- that bring home the fact that they all deserve something better and that we should be doing more to give them a better chance at life.

Anger, pity, despair, delight, hopelessness -- these are the emotions recorded in this moving and horribly accurate report on how natural and man-made atrocities have robbed millions of children of everything but their smiles.