Books. The very word fills our minds with various thoughts. Whether it is J.K. Rowling’s majestic Harry Potter books or Dan Brown’s nerve-racking mysterious books; books are books.
The little and sweet abode of Sree Karpagavalli Vidyalaya Middle School, Mylapore, realized the value of books and celebrated their ‘Library Day’ to commemorate the completion of one year of setting up their library for primary classes in the school during the second week of February.
The library in the school set up by Altius Foundation with the help of Sweta Saharia and her friends of Chennai Volunteers has close to 800 books now. It is maintained and arranged based on the training given by Hippocampus.
The event held on Feb. 12, 2016, was a short and sweet one. The Library Day was a follow-up of the ‘Library Week,’ which the school had celebrated through many activities such as ‘Read-a-thon’, ‘Two Characters Meet’, ‘Bookworm’ and ‘Enact a Story.’ All the events were centred around books and was meant to enhance the love for reading among the kids. The kids enjoyed a lot and also learned a lot from it. The Karka Library, a project of the Altius Foundation, which has teamed up with the school, started as just a box of books stacked neatly in 2012 and transformed into a huge room which is full of books in 2016. This was made possible by the active participation of the kids and also the proper maintenance of the library by the facilitators.
The chief guests for the event were young Yamini Prasanth and P.S. Nandini. Yamini Prasanth is a 14-year-old student of Vidya Mandir who is also an author and has written two books, Mishti and another book titled Best of Granny’s stories, which is a collection of 20 short stories. Her next book is due for release in April. The publisher of her books, Ms. Saraswathi of Mango Publications, was also present at the function.
Yamini is an avid reader and writer and told the kids about how dreaming helps us think more and to become more creative. Nandini is a 2nd-year engineering student at Sastra University, Thanjavur, who came up with a project called ‘Keni,’ when she was in school. The project is about collecting up used books and donating it to schools for starting libraries. She has also won the ‘Change Maker’ award in 2012 for her project. A special mention is that the first school to which she donated the books was Sree Karpagavalli Vidyalaya.
Revathi Ram, editor of YOCee was present throughout the event and gave away prizes for the students who have been using the library well. All the teachers in the school just hope that this event would bring about a change in the students and urge them to read more.
Books are a treasure, and when I say that I mean more than the treasure you can find in Alibaba and the 40 thieves, Treasure Island or Sinbad, the Sailor. Preserve them and you can find a great value in them afterwards.That’s what Sree Karpagavalli Vidyalaya is trying to do.