Celebrating Books

by Kelly Knowlden

Mrs. Julie Knowlden has served the school as a volunteer librarian for many years. She gives time to this project as she is able and this year is doing some “book advertisements” during the month of February. She will be visiting each classroom on Fridays through March 1 to promote selected books that are excellent reading material for that particular grade or grades. This past Friday, she read portions of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Let’s Roll, Leah’s Pony, and The Wing Shop to various grades. The goal in doing this is to inspire children’s curiosity in reading good books.

We will celebrate our Book Week from February 25-March 1. More details will follow. However, let me mention once again one of the books that will KILL your child’s love of reading. It is Facebook. Here is why. The medium is the medium. It is an electronic relationship with others that swallows large amounts of time and allows one to “design” themselves and their presentation of self to others. Then they can have inane conversations that resemble relationship but have no real “face” time so that others can really see what you are saying (reason for emoticons). It ought to be called “Faceless-book.” Please also note that though students insist that Facebook is private, colleges and employers hire people to do searches on Facebook to find out about potential students or employees. Anything they download is public domain— including pictures, quotes and words. If you have not checked out your child’s Facebook lately, you’d better. I have been on some (unknown to them) and think that some students are leading double lives. Of course, by now you’ve noted the addition to the 2013-2014 Student Handbook concerning Facebook.

The reasons for reading are numerous and we will be noting several of them in the next few weeks leading up to our week of fun celebrations. Student’s lives will be richer for the characters they meet in books. We read to all our children until they were out of the house. The memories of doing so are sweet in those shared experiences. I would not trade them for one faceless moment on the computer.