? Happy International Book Giving Day! ?

International Book Giving Day! It truly does exist! And, bookworm that I am, I cannot resist taking part. This is a day devoted, in their own words to ‘getting new, used and borrowed books in the hands of as many children as possible.’ What’s not to love?

As I am currently travelling with my family in India for 6 months (click here to read all about it), my three kids chose a book each that they have finished reading. Then we jumped into an auto-rickshaw with a very amusing driver named Mohamed Ali (blissfully unaware of his more famous namesake) with the most bling vehicle I’ve ever seen replete with disco lights and tasseled hearts hanging from the ceiling, and instructed him ‘to take us to the local English-speaking school’. Now, I know that in my UK it would be nigh on impossible to just march into a school and knock on the door of the headteacher. But hey, this is India. So that’s what we did. The headteacher was slightly bewildered by our sudden appearance, but bemusement quickly gave way to warmth. We proceeded to be given a tour of the school and the library and met a number of very friendly teachers before we handed our books over to the school librarian.

The headteacher

The school library

Sivagiri Sree Narayana School near Varkala, Kerala

What did you do to celebrate International Book Giving Day? Or what will  you do next year?

To complement this post, read what we got up to last year in 2017; a reflection on whether age-banding on books is really necessary and why reading aloud to even older kids is not just special, but vital.