Joan Boulerice and her assistant Li Jingyuan (the woman in green) recommend books in English to students at Bao Qiong Library at Yunnan Normal University in June. PHOTOS BY CHEN LIANG / CHINA

That Book Woman, by Heather Henson, is one of thousands of books in English in Joan Boulerice’s library at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province.

It tells a moving story of a woman who brings books to children in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains. The story also honors a special part of American history — the Pack Horse Librarians — who helped untold numbers of children shape into lifetime readers.

At 61, Boulerice, who teaches English and hails from Massachusetts in the United States, has thought of herself as “that book woman”. Since she came to China in 1985, she has encouraged her Chinese students to read books in English.

While teaching at Jishou University in Hunan province between 1987 and 1989, she first built up a small library for her students majoring in English. Since then, she has pushed English-reading among her students through her Bao Qiong Library, which carries her Chinese name.

“I just wanted a place for students to gather — we can talk a little bit, maybe they can do their homework there and we can have some books to borrow,” she told China Daily recently in her two-room library at Yunnan Normal University.

She has opened a library with books in English for her students in each city where she taught. Besides Jishou and Kunming, they include Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Beijing, Hanzhong and Xi’an in Shaanxi province.

She always left her library to the college where she worked, until she started teaching in Xi’an in 2001. She stayed there for eight years. The library was bigger than all of her previous libraries, she said, with about 5,000 books. When she left for Yunnan Normal University in 2009, she decided to take the books with her, in about 155 boxes.

Now her library has nearly 12,000 books and magazines, “more than double in the six years”.