Watching a Community Library Begin
It is Sunday morning. We have rain in short bursts that render the green and the red sharper to the eye. I walk through a narrow lane, escaping a large buffalo ( if the buffalo would write, he might say the same thing!) and approach a plastic covered verandah. A low hum of voices […]
Teaching with Cultural Diversity
Our classrooms are expected to be diverse. In our Libraries in Schools program, we carefully and very intentionally select our schools on a criteria of diversity and then proceed to embrace this range of utter un-uniformity. The ethos of ‘access to all’ is made real by choosing schools with a high density of children coming […]
The Library Effect
The summer break seems interminable for some children. The heat and the chores of the day are broken by the library opening time. Look outs watch for the team as either a bike or a car or van from Bookworm pull into the lane. Languid young boys struggling to grow up fast into men, watch […]
Stitching in the park
Every summer, Bookworm privileges working with needle and thread as a way to keep the craft alive but also to collaborate around stitching. In the past, Bookworm has initiated ‘godri’ – quilts as a collaborative initiative as well as collaborative story panels – using motifs hand stitched by various people around memory and story. Bookworm […]
In and Out of the Library System
I have been on the margins of the Government system for all of my life – both personal and professional until the last decade. It is a comfortable, easy place to stand and watch and intersect when and if necessary, driven always by my own needs. My Professional intersections have begun to grow more robust […]
An Open House
Ruth Krauss in her book Open House for Butterflies illustrated with Maurice Sendak writes, Everybody should be quiet Near a little stream and listen Today, I had that joy, not near a stream but within the library – my idea of a stream and I listened to the excited voices of 45 school teachers and […]
A Rainforest in Chimbel
A weekend library session was scheduled into my day. I would be at our community library room in Chimbel and it would be weeks since I was there, so I was excited and curious to experience the sessions we do at the library through our library educators. The story chosen was The Great Kapok Tree, […]
Booktalking with technology
I met the students and faculty of Hongirana School for Excellence on a Library Audit visit late last year. Hongirana School is situated close to Sagar town and has the biodiversity of the Western Ghats with the school surrounded by nature. Within this school, rests a beautiful library building that our team had the joy […]
Special Delivery
Yes, we are a library and yes we receive boxes of books. Yes, this is the fund raising month and yes, boxes of stuff are being left at the library doorstep for the Jumble but a few days back a delivery van pulled up. Many eyes lifted from screen, pages of books and faces and […]
Partnering with teachers
In our LiS program, we realise that the impact and culture of reading can only be strengthened by the rich community of teachers who inhabit a school. We were honored to have two of our LiS school partners encourage their teachers to attend an interactive session at Bookworm. The morning was filled with exploring, reading, […]