World Book Day 2015 is one of the highlights on primary school calendars

Kleinberg Primary School Learners on World Book Day (Photo: Nadia)

World Book Day is one of the highlights on the calendars of our primary schools. It doesn't matter which primary school you visited last Thursday, 23 April, you would have experienced the joys of schools celebrating the reading of books.  In fact,  all the schools form part of a spontaneous inter-school Book Gala Festival event here. The colourful flamboyancy around World Book Day makes the event irresistible. It is one of those school events that most parents become involved in.

Each school organizes their own World Book Day festival based on the central theme: Celebrating the importance of reading.  The entertainment line up includes open-air poetry recitals, book reading, musicals and drama skits. Children dress up as their favourite storybook character and teachers join in on the fun as well.  

Interestingly, the children always choose to impersonate the main character in the story. This should tell us something. The storybook heroes are usually the ones who are fun loving, naughty but nice at times, adventurous and highly imaginative. The children can identify with these sometimes crazy characters because they share the same qualities. World Book Day is the ideal opportunity for the children, their parents and their teachers to celebrate the wonder of story books that can unlock all these possibilities for children.

Floreat Primary School enjoying their World Book Day celebrations. (Photo: N. Isaacs)

The power of books

We don't have to debate the powerful empowering role that reading books play to help our children fly. Reading books transport our children to faraway places where they meet interesting friends of different cultures, learn about the beautiful world with its animals and plants AND often they meet weird and wonderful imaginative creatures that a gifted author has created for their pleasure. When  children are whisked away on their carefree reading journey, their imagination is stimulated, their thinking improves, their vocabulary expands and they learn to express themselves clearly.


All we have to do is keep the reading flame alive by ensuring that all our children read at least 40 books for pleasure this year. Keep the classroom reading alive and help unlock our children's brilliance.