CESRUD/FAVL Ghana community Libraries resumed work on the 9th of January 2018. All the three libraries were cleaned in order to get premises conducive for reading and learning to kick-start the new year. On January 11th, the three libraries were opened to the public. As expected for these earlier days at school, attendance in all three libraries was low for the first week following the break. However, by the second week, the patronage had increased. Many of the patrons were seen reading different kinds of story books, as well as playing games under the guidance of the librarians. During these first and second weeks at work, I was able to read a number of different story books with patrons.
Prime among the story books I enjoy reading and almost shared it all the time with patrons or pupils because the moral it has to patrons or pupils is entitled Teen Princess, written Diana Mcbagonluri. Here is a summary: Dede Nortey was a girl of many dreams. She was also intelligent as well as confident as a result of her hard work. Dede was always seen at the library with her best friend Naa. At the library they always read and exchanged different kinds of story books, and completed their home work. Dede balanced all these with her household chores. Dede was a little girl who had a very big dream. She wanted to be a Teen Princess and she was prepared to overcome any challenge to achieve this dream. But as Dede was soon to find out, dreams can be very different from reality. The odds were against Dede the moment she entered the contest. At one point the only option left for her was to quit the contest, if she was to avoid embarrassment. But the words of her mother kept ringing in her head. These were the words of Dede’s mother to her long before she entered the contest: “You don’t need to paint your face to be a Teen Princess. What you need is your head.” And so with these words ringing in her head combined with her hard working spirit, she was able to overcome and be crowned the next Teen Princess. This particular story has a lot of challenging lessons to the young ones who want to be good readers and achieve whatever dreams they want to achieve in the future to work hard, no matter the circumstances, hard work pays.
All the schools I have since visited this year, what I do normally is to go with two copies of this particular story books; one will be given to the head teacher or his assistant to go through with me as I read to the students/pupils, whiles I’m reading and students/pupils are doing the listening, the teacher role is to normally put down some questions from the story, after I’m done reading, I will ask questions to assess the impact of the reading. They responses to the questions and contributions so far have been very great at the schools I have visited. Is an idea the teachers have embraced, news of this fruitful exercise have spread to other basic schools I’m yet to visit, teachers and pupils of these other schools expect to see me soon in their respective schools to talk to their students on the importance of reading and also share with students/pupils stories that will stimulate or trigger them to like reading. And so more tours to the basic schools around the community libraries and perhaps beyond are to be expected in this first quarter. Other books read include: Mumaizu and the Hippos, The Lucky One, Laali Saves the King among others.