Written by Divya Ribeiro
Not many people are lucky to have a close relationship with their local libraries, as I have had with Bookworm. I was first introduced to the Bookworm Library when I was young. Every day after school, my parents would drop me off at the library where I would spend a good one hour browsing through books and experimenting with papier-mâché, ice cream sticks and painting on sliced bread with food colouring! On selected days of the week, we would have a ‘Library Book Exchange Period’ where the Bookworm van would come to school with blue crates filled with books. Ten years later, I continue to have this connection with the library and it did not come as a surprise to find out that they even kept my library card.
Bookworm has a wonderful collection of children’s books in every category possible written by authors from around the world. Since I hope to specialise in Illustration, a one month internship gave me an exposure to a variety of illustration styles and stories exploring themes of happiness, depression, culture, history, etc. I was constantly being handed books by Anandita and Alexis from the Bookworm Team – ‘The Red Tree’, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ and many more – who were excited to show me what they had enjoyed reading.
The team also carefully took my own interests into consideration and tasked me with projects they knew I would enjoy. I was trusted with the responsibility of designing the Bookworm Lockdown and Book Delivery logos, social media posts, book sorting and poster making. They also included me in many activities like the book talks, literacy games and guided drawing programmes.
However, there are two activities that had a big impact on me as an intern. The first was the book talk for the new arrivals. I was tasked with researching the book ‘Busing Brewster’ and finding two more books set in a segregation or desegregation context and presenting what I had learnt to the team. One of these books was ‘Smells and Stenches’ by Sara Joseph which prompted a discussion on the importance of stories in building empathy in children and on challenging our preconceived notions and biases towards people from diverse communities. These are themes that I want to explore further in my studies and I hope to have the team members as my mentors. I learnt to examine the book critically and question everything so that I may find something interesting hiding in the details of the story.
The second activity was the collaborative artwork created for World Environment Day organised by Alexis and I. The topic of the artwork was ‘The Western Ghats in 2020’ which is a diversity hotspot in Goa threatened by 3 government approved infrastructure projects that will cause irreparable damage to Goa’s natural ecosystems. The entire team took interest in the cause and contributed in their own way to the drawing. Not only did they participate enthusiastically, but they shared the same concern as I did. The project has now evolved into a large scale stitching panel and a podcast to share poetry surrounding the theme of nature.
Anyone who has visited Bookworm will know it is not an ordinary library. It is a space to be creative, to have fun while learning and silence is definitely not mandatory! The Bookworm team consists of a group incredibly dedicated, welcoming and compassionate people who work tirelessly towards their vision of building a community of readers and I am lucky to have worked and learned from them, even if it was just for one month.