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 16th
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!!
