Childrens's Book Week at Tisch Library

Production Date: (Mar 17, 2008)

Library users in mid-November might notice a colorful display in the Tisch Lobby, or come across a troupe of unexpectedly short visitors clustered around President Bacow as he reads aloud.  In honor of Children’s Book Week, Tisch celebrates the benefits and joys of reading from a young age by inviting local schoolchildren, usually in grades one through three, to visit the library. 

Children’s Book Week began as a national campaign in 1919.  It grew out of a concern by members of the American Booksellers Association that there was not enough quality literature geared toward children.  The Children’s Book Council, created in 1944 at the urging of the original Children’s Book Week planners, creates a new theme each year, and sponsors promotional materials and events.  Across the country, librarians, teachers, booksellers, and families with children of all ages are encouraged to participate in any of a number of ways, including staging a “Read-In,” donating books to local hospitals, exchanging favorite books with classmates, attending an author talk, and hosting reading-themed parties.

At Tisch Library, the staff takes Children’s Book Week as an opportunity to welcome school kids to campus and help reinforce a lifetime love of learning and reading.  Before they visit, the children create artwork based around the Children’s Book Week theme.  The artwork is sent to Tisch, and a group of staff members displays it in the lobby. During their visit, the children hear a story, read by a Tufts staff member, and the University President is an annual Children’s Book Week reader.  A library volunteer takes the children on a tour of the library’s public and technical services areas, and the children get to see their own artwork on display in the lobby.  Each child is given a book as a memento to take home and share with their families. 

This year, the Children’s Book Week theme was “Rise Up Reading,” and the exhibit and event planning was done by Tisch staff members Debby Urban and Ann-Marie Ferraro.  40 second graders from the Brooks School in Medford decorated bookmarks with their favorite books or sayings about reading, then visited the Tisch Library on the morning of November 14.  Stephanie Gottwald, from the Center of Language and Reading, read the group a book called “Library Lion,” and President Bacow read them “the Boy Who Was Raised by Librarians.”  Before they left, the teachers accompanying the students were presented with copies of the books read aloud to add to their classroom libraries. 

We hope that children will discover a love of reading early in life.  Maybe Children’s Book Week will also inspire members of the Tufts community to read to the children in their life—sons, daughters, nieces, nephews—to encourage them to “Rise Up Reading”!

 


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