Books in native languages

 Now, I am not really sure what the current correct term is for someones mother tongue, or father tongue for that matter, the language which they hear round and about them when they are born, the one that they grow up speaking, or the ones that they grow up speaking if they are fortunate enough to be brought up in a bi-lingual household. There is considerable research around that says to be fully literate you must first be securely literate in your birth language. Once you have cracked it in one language it makes it much easier to be literate in another. I have just read "Lion", the story of Saroo Brierly and one of the things in the book that shocked me was his illiteracy at the age of 5. Because of his circumstances although he was able to speak, he never really learnt any vocabulary meaning that he could not communicate with people to explain that he was lost.

I personally feel rather cheated by life. I was certainly securely literate in English, the language that everyone spoke around me, and I developed a full, rich vocabulary full of description, metaphor, poetry because I come from the South Wales Valleys and the socialist background of Chapel, where creativity, education and learning were the guiding principles of life. So no problem there. But, Welsh was not spoken, the road signs were not bilingual at the time. There were no Welsh playgroups, or nurseries and Welsh was not an exam subject in School, so I missed out on the chance of being bi-lingual and knowing more Welsh than being able to sing the Welsh national Anthem or Welsh Hymns or Nursery Rhymes. It would have been great if I could have had some children's books in Welsh to develop literacy in Welsh.

Perhaps that is why I am a bit concerned about the charitable ventures that send books off to overseas places. Are they killing off minority languages by flooding the place with books in English? It is also why I am really pleased when I come across ventures like this mobile library for refugees in Greece, because they have a collection of books in the languages of the refugees.

Now I am not so sure about this venture. Although it shows compassion and generosity of the people of Norfolk, it doesn't really say whether the books are in English it implies that they are, as the bus it to be converted into a mobile library for the Ivory Coast and will be "like an English resource centre in Adibjan". According to Wikipedia, Adibjan, the largest city of the Ivory Coast, is French speaking. I may be getting this out of context, as the organiser is from the Ivory Coast herself. Maybe there is a desire to learn English in the Ivory Coast and this is just a resource to help that. It way well be a way of making sure that the literate children of the Ivory Coast become literate in more than one language.

Summer now gone, but the memories remain

I always loved the school summer holdiays, as a child and as an adult when I had children of my own. It is 6 glorious weeks when children are running amok and pestering their bored and irritable parents. Well, that is what I used to do, but that was way before computers and the Internet and interactive gaming meant that you played Monopoly with your friends. Sometimes you could stretch a game out for days!! (you had to have a friend with parents that didn't mind their dining table being occupied for that long).

It is far more likely that children today will settle down in a corner and sink into the Internet with one or more mobile device. However, you can drag them outside, make them walk somewhere,take them to run in the park or go on a bus or in a car to your local library. Many blog posts ago I talked about the Summer Reading Challenge. My field work started one year at the time of the Summer Reading Challenge and ended at the same time the following year. So, today the Summer Reading Challenge begins. Each year the Reading Agency develops this initiative to make sure that children's reading levels are kept up while they are not at school. Children that sign up have to read at least 6 books from their local library where they will also receive various rewards. There is a theme each year, and this time it is "Animal Agents".

Many libraries hold special themed sessions and there are colouring and activity sheets to give out. I have been looking through my archive of Google Alerts again, and I found that in 2014 the children of Sarn and Bridgend fought a dragon, paraded through the town and inspected a Fire Engine as part of that year's challenge. A detailed account can be found here.

Some libraries take the chance of the Summer Reading Challenge to engage young people to help out with their activities. This means that children from 5 -12 years and 13 - 18 years can be gainfully occupied. At the CILIP conference this year I found out what Bolton Libraries do with their Summer Reading Challenge volunteer workforce. They have proper training work with younger children on craft activities, this year they are being trained to do storytelling, and they too are rewarded, frequently with pizza! They are trusted and respected and given real choices on the way that the volunteer team operates. For example, when the scheme was set up the young people decided that they should be called "Imaginators", because they were there to help children stimulate their imagination.

I heard a young man speak about his experience as a volunteer. He is at the stage of having applied for university and found that having been an Imaginator for a number of years he was able to add his experience and skills to his CV. He felt that it gave him an "edge" over other candidates. He is going to study History, but he feels that at some point he would like to get back into the library and information world. He is no longer a volunteer at the library, because the library now employ him in a Saturday job.

I found this quite inspiring. I think that Bolton Libraries are taking exactly the right approach to volunteers. They are not just a cheap substitute for full time staff, they are not there just to pad out numbers, they are there to be educated, socialised into the world of work and to gain experience that they can use for the rest of their life.