Reading Inspires

NATIONL BOOK WEEK 2015 (Erap Primary School)

                                    Ismael K. Isikel 7/8/2015

My National Book Week speech delivered on 7th August 2015 at Erap Primary School.

 Principle, teachers, students, and parents on behalf of the University Library I thank you for the invitation to officiate here at Erap Primary School to mark National Book Week 2015. It is an important occasion in the Education calendar in PNG and the world. It is celebrated worldwide.

The theme for this year’s book week is Reading is Power. Every book week is celebrated with a theme that carries the message of book week or book day as known in other countries.

National Book Week is about:

·         Celebrating Books, Reading, and Libraries

·         The love of books and reading for education, information, and personal interests

·         In doing so we are also promoting literacy (the ability to read and write) and literature (the love of stories, poems, and plays)

·         I acknowledge authors of both fiction and nonfiction for creating stories and knowledge that we enjoy and learn from.

Books record events, stories, knowledge, people and places, to name a few.

Books give us inspiration. They inspire us to do something; even something creative. Let me illustrate the term inspiration. In PNG there are recorded myths about the moon and going to the moon. One of the myths tells us that the moon stayed underground until one day someone plucked it out. He held it in his hands and it grew and grew and finally floated off into the sky where it has remained giving light to the world.  In one Native American legend, the gods struck the moon in the face with a rabbit, and it stayed there lighting the world every night. Besides those legends, you have been singing "Hey, diddle, diddle,"

Hey, diddle, diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed

To see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Note the third line: The Cow Jumped Over the Moon. That is another reference to the moon. Isn’t that another of those inspirations?

That song was composed centuries before Niel Armstrong landed on the moon in July 1969. In fact it was already popular around the 16^th century. The power of inspiration from stories gives people ideas to device ways and strategies; to achieve something, even something greater such as landing on the moon.

Libraries help preserve and distribute information. They help us not to reinvent the wheel. They help us improve on previous knowledge. They are traditional places for study and self-learning. The Internet should not be taken as replacement for the traditional library because when there is no electricity or internet connections, I can always read a book on hand.

As far as civilisation is concerned nations have prospered because of libraries. They stored information where later generations retrieved them and improved on various fields of knowledge such as mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and law.

Reading helps in acquiring information to improve our knowledge and wisdom. Reading helps us to improve and succeed at school, at work, and at home. It helps us to decide what is best for us and what is not good. It has the greatest potential to influence success in life. It keeps us well connected with the community we live in and the world.

Reading influences positive behaviour in our relationships with others and our surroundings as illustrated in this short poem simply titled “Mirror Image”

                                                      Dogs are their masters

Children are their parents

Students are their teachers

And Books are their readers

                                                Ismael K. Isikel

READING IS POWER!! ASA SUMBA!!