Storytelling for school children
This is a lovely picture from Gwanda and the Edward Ndlovu Library!
The school children come to the Library from most of the schools which are located in walking distance from the central placed library. They can borrow 1-2 books and take home (that is if they have bought a library card, which cost a small sum every year), they can sit in the library and read, sometimes there is a story teller who tells them an interesting story or even makes a “book talk”.
That is to present a book suitable for the age and reading skills, in a way that makes it popular to the children and “everybody” wants to borrow just that book. It is not easy to catch up the children all the time, but if you really make a good “book talk” a few times the children starts to listen to you at once next time. I also check what book I talked about last time I saw this group of children (you have to make a very good dairy about your book talks) ask them questions about what they liked the book, how many have read it and if they can recommend it.
Children love to give books points.
That is: how many points do you give this book from 1 to 10? You can make a list on to put on the wall where the children can arrange the books they read during a semester, from the best to the worse. Of course these books have to have their on shelf and are to be marked somehow. On the wall the children can write a resume on the book, tell the title, the author, the illustrator, what the story was about and so on. They listen more to each other than to you.
For a whole school year I had 2 girls coming into the library making “the week’s book” (or the book of the month). They recommended a book they had read (it has to be one of the library books) telling which grouped of children that could like it and why, if it was suitable for parents and so on. This was very popular. All the children rushed up to their shelf and looked for the new book and it was a long queue of children who wanted that particular book.
The girls doing this were 12-13 years old, and they took responsibility for choosing different books suitable for different children.
Love from me as a school librarian in Sweden with a special interest in Gwanda Matabeleland South in Zimbabwe. Kersti
