Twelve year old gives Facebook the flick

Chylo Nahona is 12 and lives in Waverley.

She loves her family of five brothers and sisters, going to school and helping her mum look after extra children in the weekends.

Every day Chylo heads to the Waverley Library where she now helps out stamping and stacking books.

She is in the right place. She has been described by a librarian as a "very rare young girl".

"I really love reading books and I love reading the newspaper everyday and I always watch the news on TV. I am very interested in knowing what is happening in our world.''

But sometimes she wishes she lived in the "old days'', she said.

"The days when you always wrote with a pen or a pencil and wrote in a book. I don't like having to use computers and I think cell phones are wrecking kids with Facebook and other stuff. It does nothing for their brain. I try to tell kids it's really not that great for their minds but they think I'm just weird.''

Chylo said she worries all the time about girls who think the only way to be great is grow up, have a lot of money and clothes and "tons of glittery" stuff.

As far back as she can remember her greatest love has been reading books and writing stories.

"My grandfather loved books and writing. He used to talk to me about it all the time and I was only little then.

"He died when I was six but I can still hear him telling me to keep reading and writing because that was the best way for me to grow up and have a good life.''

Chylo said her grandfather told her again and again to care for her brain.
"I get worried when I see kids my age doing and saying things just to get attention, like telling lots of mad stuff on Facebook just to get other kids excited. Half the time they are just making it up and sometimes it's so bad when they say terrible lies about other people."

At the end of term Chylo gave a speech at school titled "The Meaning of Life".
"I questioned what our life means and I read as much as I could to find out .''

When she grows up she wants to travel the world and hopes she will find some answers.
"After I have been to university first though.''

Chylo has only moved back with her family in Waverley recently from Christchurch.
"I was living with my aunty there but I always knew I would come back here because my grandfather said I had to return because it was our place and I was born here.''

In Christchurch the number of homeless kids and people on the streets worried her, she said.

"So I fixed up my aunty's shed with pillows and blankets and told some of them they could come and stay with us. My aunty let me make a pot of food as well.''

In her spare time Chylo is writing a book which she said she has nearly finished.
"It is a story about people and how things can change for them for sometimes better and sometimes the change can be very bad.

"I hope to finish it soon and I would love to get it published and to see it in this library. I couldn't imagine anything better.''

Waverley Librarian Shereece Avison said Chylo was "very rare' young girl.
"We all think she is amazing and she is a great help to us around here.''

Ms Avision said it was a pleasure meeting a girl like Chlyo.

"I've told her that when she is famous I can say I knew her well.''