Marea With an E
How hard can it be for a wannabe journo to write 800 words a week? Famous last words.
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Milestones
Today I attended my last Bookweek parade as a parent. Hooray I thought. After more than 10 years of suffering I was finally free from the last minute stress attacks associated with this annual drama. Not being handy with a Husqvarna I was running out of creative ways to fashion cardboard, pins and crepe paper into a reasonable facsimile of the most famous book characters of all time. But as I sat watching the Harry Potters, Captain Underpants and Darth Vaders I realised that this was a significant milestone for both me and the kids participating.
The 2008 theme for Bookweek Fuel your mind was meant to evoke images of books nourishing the soul and the intellect. From what I saw today kids find nourishment from mainly visual characters such as Homer Simpson, Luke Skywalker,Indiana Jones and The Joker. Perhaps not what the Childrens Book Council of Australia had in mind and I certainly was a bit disheartened to see so few classic characters like Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist and Huckleberry Finn. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh afterall reading has to be fun and the language of books has to resonate with the reader. Still I couldn’t help wonder what these kids, bought up in this frenetic digital age, will be reading in the next five to ten years. Will anybody ever read Charles Dickens or Robert Louis Stevenson? How will kids keep up with the sheer volume of reading available to them? Will printed books survive or will they all be reading dumbed down bite sized pieces on their iPhones or whatever the latest gadget is?
As one of the teachers said today one of the greatest joys in life is to “curl up with a book and lose yourself in the characters and the story and fuel your imagination”. I couldn’t agree more and after today I realised my duty to Bookweek is not really over it has just changed. I still have a duty to encourage my kids to read whenever they can and in whatever form, be it books, comics or newspapers. I think then there’s a chance they will discover a whole host of reading that they will cherish and maybe even pass on to their own families. I sure would like to be at a Bookweek parade in 2050!
