World Book Day celebrated in style

World Book Day was celebrated in style at Laerskool Paardekraal Primary School on 23 April, where learners and teachers dressed up like fairytale book characters. The day encourages the learners to explore the joy of reading and literacy significance.

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The school honoured authors’ contributions to social and cultural growth, the value of books, the importance of reading, and authors’ rights over their work. The teachers want to foster the love of reading and reading habits among the learners and want to ensure that they can read and understand, since books can stimulate their creativity, imagination, and critical thinking.

Desire le Grange, a teacher at the school, mentioned how the school wants to build a good environment for reading.

“We want to create a positive and inclusive environment to promote reading and celebrate World Book Day. This day has a lot of academic benefits and improves the learners’ knowledge.

Since everything is online, we want our learners not to rely on the internet, but put more focus on the books because reading books triggers our minds,” said Desire.

A learner who dressed up like the Queen of Hearts shared how she feels about her outfit.

Through this day I get to feel like my favourite fairytale character, which is a special moment for me and every learner, we get to learnt about other fairytale characters that are interesting,” said Shailer Cunningham, a learner in Grade Seven.

Amanda Martignone, a teacher who dressed up like Maleficent, a character in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, said, “We encouraged the learners to dress up like fairytale characters to see what kind of books our learners love to read at home or school.”

The school celebrated World Book Day to highlight the importance of literacy through learners, and it’s an opportunity for other learners to connect through the shared love of books.