The Nationwide Reading Day at Colégio Humboldt

In October this year, 2020, the governor of the State São Paulo (in Brazil) and the mayor of the city São Paulo allowed the schools to reopen sparsely, with extracurricular activities and only 20% to 35% daily occupation of the building, depending on the year you study in. The official classes continued solely online. The library also reopened at the same time, next to the drive-thru, that continued normally, and that was great for us, who work here. But, as school librarians, we miss the students so much!! Once or twice a week, more or less, a group of students come to the library for reading nowadays, with all new protocols to be followed, like maintaining distance of at least 1.5m, cleaning hands with alcohol before touching the books, wearing a mask all the time and requesting help from a librarian in case of any need, just to name a few. We put the books for at least 7 days in a row in quarantine and suspended fines.

In November, the same scheme continued. Also, a special occasion happened for the students of the first year on the 20th, the third Friday in November. It was setting a signal for the importance of reading and at the same time inspiring children and adults to listen to stories with the Nationwide Reading Day (Der Bundesweite Vorlesetag) in Germany. 

Since the school has ties with Germany, we participated with this yearly returning special day, for the second time in a row now. On this day, in Germany, many creative activities happen, as well digitally, at home, in a small group or at a distance. There is even a fairy tale available in 13 languages and 12 bonus stories at www.einfachvorlesen.de. You can also find the digital reading festival on Instagram and Facebook, with well known writers like Cornelia Funke, Thomas Müller, Annette Frier, Muschda Sherzada and Nazan Eckes. There were at least 570.834 reading event registrations, including our participation (for more info, access: https://www.vorlesetag.de/ (in German only)).

But back here in Brazil, many teachers, but also other personnel of the school, read during that day a children's book of their own liking. For instance, I read the book “Flávia e o bolo de chocolate” (Flávia and the chocolate cake) of Miriam Leitão to the 3 1st-year classes. It is a wonderful story about an adopted girl with dark coloured skin, who wants to be like her mother, with light coloured skin. The girl hates the colour brown and so isn't allowed to eat or play with anything that has this colour by her mother. I will not tell the end of the story, but it is a wonderful one that makes children aware about differences in life in a very easy coming way and makes it possible, for us who read it, to ask the right questions to reflect about with them. (And without telling them about the Black Lives Matter movement, the theme came in handy too). We all read stories to learn many new things together, always explaining the contents and relating them to concrete experiences, thus always expanding their cultural knowledge, creating a real reading adventure.

Now December has arrived already and schools are preparing themselves to start the Summer holidays in a few weeks. Classes continue online as before only, and we will have a recess until the next school year starts, by the end of January. Will it continue online solely or not? As of yet, we still don´t know for sure, it all depends.

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NOTE

In our article Biographies of Famous Librarians : Who's Who in Library and Information Science we have added a section "Librarians' Stories and A Day in the Life of a Librarian" where library professionals can tell their stories to the world. The following information is given there:

We invite passionate library professionals to contribute to this section and tell your story to the world. You can write for Librarianship Studies in three ways as described below.
1. Librarians' Stories - In this section, we will include autobiographical articles by librarians, catalogers, library and information science teachers, and other library professionals who tell their stories in their own words.
2. Current LIS Professional Experience: If you are a librarian or working on any designation in some library, then we are interested in knowing about your work experience. No matter you are working in a small library, school library, or in a big university library, we are interested in knowing about them all. No matter if you are holding a very high designation or just responsible for other jobs such as barcode pasting, magnetic tape inserting, or else, every library job is important, and our readers are interested in knowing about all of them. Tell us how your library is organized, its workflow what database it offers, reference desk, circulation desk, serials section, acquisitions section, etc. Write about your experiences and we would be happy to publish that. Again it would more interesting to LIS professionals if you include pictures and other multimedia items with your article. Sometimes it may be against the policy of your library to write about it, in that case, you may do it without mentioning the name of your library, just explaining your workday and responsibilities, etc.
3. A Day in the Life of a Librarian: You may describe your typical day as a librarian. For example, check this article: A day in the life of a librarian.

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CITATION INFORMATION

Article Title

• The Nationwide Reading Day at Colégio Humboldt

Article Author

• Marjolein van der Vegt (Marjolein started her career as an administrative assistant, to assume a full-time position as librarian in 2016 at the German/Brazilian school Colégio Humboldt in the city São Paulo. For her it is very important that students inspire themselves into reading and find the love for it in themselves, starting by creating good memories about the school library. She, therefore, reads whenever possible for the students in pre-school and campaigns a lot with coordinators and language teachers to use the library as often as possible as their language laboratory.)

Website Name

• Librarianship Studies & Information Technology

URL

• https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2020/12/the-nationwide-reading-day-at-colegio.html 

Original Published Date

• Written: 2020-12-12

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