Book Lovers Day- library exercise

Reading is one of the joys of life, and once you begin, you can't stop especially when you've got so many books to look forward to! With this thought the School Library celebrated Book Lovers Day on the 9 August, 2017. The occasion is called National Book Lovers Day in the United States where they regularly observe it.

Books are mans best friend. They can make you cry, they can make you laugh but they will never leave you lonely. The library is the most obvious place for any booklover to spend a full day.

We also planned activities, age appropriately, which would engage the children for the whole day with the world of books.

The day started with a treasure hunt for books, for class VII. Many were eagerly waiting to participate in this activity but a paucity of time forced us to include only limited number of children from each section. We decided to take ten Treasure Hunters from each section who hunted for books hidden on the second floor! The children were very enthusiastic about participating in this novel event.

Other classes had a plethora of activities. Class VIII was asked to 'dress' the torn books in the library and make them look more attractive for readers. Class IX was fortunate to have an author come over and meet them.The author was none other than Ms. Himanjali Sankar, a contemporary writer who writes for children. As the occasion was Book Lovers Day, she started interacting with the students about various different genres, like fiction, crime, fantasy, autobiographies, and threw light on each these. She emphasised reading fiction especially Indian fiction. In fact, her own books have elements from her own life. For example, her pet dog named Rousseau who appears in many of her books!

The children of class IX had an interactive session with the author who patiently answered their questions. She also guided a few of them who expressed a wish to become writers when they grow up.

The next event was a short drama in the Library by some students of classes IX and X. The drama was Chalak kisaan aur chaar thag. The script was humorous and it was thoroughly enjoyed by the students of class IV. The students who participated in the drama were Prerna, Khushi Malik, Randhir, Vanshita Sethi, Parul and Bareen from X-B. Next in the line were three different storytellers who were from classes IX and X. They were Khushi Gaba, Vedanshi Sagar, Tejkirat Singh and Vini Dev.

After a break, a resource person from RatnaSagar publishers, Ms. Anamika Sharma, an educator herself interacted with the students. She was young and very vivacious and connected with the students instantaneously. She sat on the floor like a bubbly child and gave her young listeners an interesting activity to start with. She gave a sentence as a starting cue to the first group of three groups that she first divided the listeners into. They were then asked to form a story using the sentence. It was thus a speaking, listening and learning activity. Some of the children had curious cues for their stories which made the exercise more challenging and also fun! In fact the session got extended as Ms. Sharma kept framing more sentence-building games. The day ended with a DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time activity for the whole School, where everyone was engrossed in reading for 20 minutes.

Students seemed very happy to be a part of this event and numerous 'Thank you cards' made their way to the library.

J.K.Rowling once said, "I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book." It sounds so true!

Ms. Tarannum Athar.