Readers, rejoice! World Book Day is being celebrated today across the globe with several events, to bring together communities, encouraging them to read. With a vibrant reading and book lovers community active in Chennai, our city too has several groups conducting events like storytelling, plays, and workshops to share their love for the magical realm of books.
“We will be having a workshop for children on their favourite book, a quiz conducted by Quiz Foundation of India on books and authors and a book hunt besides film screenings. World Book Day is a celebration of books and authors and so we thought of bringing parents and children together around books and reading,” says Aparna Bhattacharya, Senior Manager, about the celebrations at the British Council. “Parents reading with their children goes a long way in inculcating a reading habit. We also have a programme called the Reading Challenge, where each child challenges himself/herself to read six books in six weeks and attend workshops and activities,” she adds.
Coincidentally, Shakespeare Day also happens to fall on the same day and Theatre Nisha is paying homage to the great playwright through a workshop and play. Shakti Ramani, who will be conducting the workshop, says, “We will have a workshop dealing with his texts and movement. This will be followed by the play Secret Love Life of Ophelia. Shakespeare’s works can be slightly intimidating because of the language, but I strongly believe the plot, characters and stories are fantastic and timeless. Once you get past the ‘thou’s and ‘thine’s, there’s beauty in his storytelling and it makes for a great read!”
Karthika Nambiar of the I Love Readin Library says, “World Book Day is a wonderful initiative, especially the activities being conducted in the UK that allow children to buy great books for nominal prices and dress up as their favourite literary characters. I think it’s essential to inculcate this habit young. We happened to visit a school in Kerala that has an alarm system which prompts kids to stop everything they’re doing — and devote that period of time to books! If we had more of that, I’m sure we’d have more readers.” She adds, “Although we aren’t organising anything specifically for the day, we plan to have storytelling sessions for kids during their summer vacations.”
Aneesha Vijayakumar, from Tulika Books, which is organising ‘World Book Day with Tulika’ at cultural space Wandering Artist, says, “It’s important to have these sessions for children of different age groups — not only on World Book Day, but regularly. We go to schools to make sure that children are in constant touch with books. Today’s children need to have a healthy balance with both books and technology.”
Speaking about today’s event, she adds, “We’re having a story telling session with a popular series of ours, and before that we will be having a writing workshop for children — apart from which we are having a pop-store throughout the day. The response so far has been very good. Children of all age groups are looking forward to it.”
