Book Week, a five-day celebration of books and the love of reading, was held at Global Jaya School, Tangerang, from 7 to 11 November. The annual event has always been popular with students at the prestigious IB world school since its establishment in 1995.
Throughout the years, Book Week always manages to captivate students in various fun book- or library-related activities. Sometimes the fun takes place in the quirkiest ways. On one occasion, students lined up to make a worm formation (think bookworm), all the while keeping their nose in a book. This year, the school held a doodling competition, aimed to encourage students to hone their skills in creating book illustrations. There was also an extreme reading competition, where the participants were asked to snap pictures of bizarre yet creative reading poses – think reading a book while hanging upside down on a door. Another event, called the Book-In-Jar, allows students to guess the title of a book from the shredded papers in a jar.
“For Book Week 2016, on Day One we had a Book-In where the students sat together in the school theatre for ten minutes and read a book silently. On Day Two, [storytellers] Jeeva Raghunath and Sheila Wee came to our school to do storytelling for the Primary students about the history of Singapore and tales about animals. On Day Three, we had Book Fair, Character Dress-Up Day where all Primary students and teachers wore costumes of their favourite book characters, as well as the Buddy Reading Programme where the older students [secondary students] read to the younger ones,” said Ahmad Sahroni, Global Jaya School, Head Librarian.
The celebration got even more exciting on Day Four thanks to the visit of the puppeteer community Puppetaria for a storytelling session for primary students. Another session saw a talk by Nadia Silvarani, author of the popular book “Soulmate on the Backstage”, during which she shared her experience in the local publishing industry.
Global Jaya School cooperated with several Indonesian bookstores and publishers such as Gramedia, Books & Beyond, Periplus, Unibooks and more to supply books for the Book Fair, which ran from the third to the fifth day.
In order to gauge the success of Book Week, the school library as the event’s organizer has set certain targets. “If the students’ reading skills and interest improve as shown on their academic reports, and if there are more students coming to the library to read, or perhaps even better, request more books of certain themes and titles, it means our Book Week’s mission has been accomplished,” Sahroni said with a smile.
