Reading book…
How can we define Book Week? Frankly, I think we need to rename it, broaden it a little. Maybe brainstorm the implications of ‘books’. Let me see: reading; writing; responding; discussing; thinking; analysing; imagining; challenging. Then there’s: using stories and themes as a springboard; using imagery as an inspiration for further creativity; pondering the importance of free expression in our lives; appreciating depth and difference in culturally differentiated texts; forgetting your worries through humour; finding soul mates in shared responses. I think it could be called ‘sharing responses to people’s stories’ week – but that’s too long. Why don’t we just leave it as ‘Book Week’?
Originally uploaded by Tapio Hurme
If you click on the photo of the banned books banner, you’ll be directed to its Flickr home, and you’ll be able to hover over each book to discover what it is. An interesting theme – banned books.
Censorship. It takes me back to when, as an Australian of Russian descent, I attended a Saturday Russian language school (RS, we used to call it), during the time when our parents’ fear of Russian communism was raw. My own grandfather witnessed his father being shot at the age of six. The censorship that ensued at Russian School (RS), through the eyes of young people, took on a comical aspect. The more paranoid members of our community (am I being unkind?) decided to protect us from ‘evil’ by eliminating our exposure to all things Soviet (which means ‘council’, by the way). We spent our Saturdays drawn like moths to the flame, peering through thick black texta-covered chunks of text through the light, or trying to unstick glued pages. In most cases, our discoveries left us disappointed or confused when the forbidden words revealed themselves as ‘pioneers’ (soviet scouts) or the date of a celebration we weren’t supposed to know about. Continue reading Censorship →
Button up, we’re out in the open
