Bookworm Trust

The Libraries in School Team

A flutter of activity greets you at Bookworm each morning. The school team is getting ready to go school…..are the bags packed with everything we need? Have you gone through the session plan? Where is Stephie, she was supposed to be here at 9! Uday let’s go! This is how most day’s start for the […]

QUIET READING TIME – a new component

With our Libraries in School ( LiS ) program, we have been intense in taking stories to children and running a library class systematically. We try and do this in a structured way but we did not have a segment within this structure for children to read their books or go through the books independently […]

Being Gandhi

Written by Paro Anand Pictures by Priya Kuriyan Published by Harper Collins Children’s Books  Like Chandrasekar, the 13 year old protagonist in the story – many of us feel that we have notionally reduced the month of October to remembering Gandhi as an ideal or a symbol of ‘freedom’ through school program – projects – […]

NEW LIBRARY IN BORIM

Neil Gaiman writes, “libraries are about freedom, freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communications, about entertainment, about making safe spaces and about access to information. A library is a place of safety. A haven from the world, its a place with librarian in it” Truly, a library is a space which is created […]

Of colours and birds at MOP Chimbel

From the month of November 2019 there are two sessions at MOP Chimbel that stayed with me the most. These are a poetry session on ‘My Many Coloured Days’ by Dr. Seuss and another Read Aloud and bird watching activity based on the story of ‘Salim Mamoo and Me’ by Zai Whitaker, illustrated by Prabha […]

Going on an Adventure

Following the midterm exams and with holidays ongoing, we wanted to do something different at our community library site at BLC. Being a boy’s home, the children generally spend much of their time inside during the holidays and restlessness hovers around within the walls. We decided to do a session based on the story ‘Sam […]

Bringing Teachers into Library Practice

At Bookworm, our approach has been to work with children. This was not a strategic decision, but an organic one. It emerged from the simple truth, that children are open, receptive, warm, welcoming and critical, story worlds make immediate sense, they don’t need to be ‘taught’. Ursula LeGuin writes, “ Children have a seemingly innate […]

New Book Happiness

Bookworm’s mission is to spread the love for reading to every child and one way we do this in the Libraries in School Program is by introducing children to our collection of books. Children are exposed to different kinds of books such as picture books, board books as well as types of books like fiction, […]

Taking story time from the classroom to the courtyard

With the heavy rains gone after the Diwali holidays, we conducted the library sessions at Govt. Primary School, Merces (Std. 1-4) in the courtyard. The fresh air in the school compound, with coconut trees swaying in the breeze, has added magic to our library sessions. The first time the children sat with us outside, I […]