Book reading helps stimulate students

Published: 12 June 2011

Storytelling: Author Jackie French captures the minds and imaginations of students from Mater Dei School

READING books - it's fun and everybody's doing it.

So students at Mater Dei School, Ashgrove, found to their delight when they joined more than 170,000 children across the country for Australia's biggest single storytelling event.

Children's author Jackie French visited Mater Dei to read this year's selected book, Feathers for Phoebe, as part of the Australian Library and Information Week's annual Nat-ional Simultaneous Storytime, which aims to celebrate the joy of sharing literature with children.

Feathers for Phoebe was selected this year because of its themes of self-acceptance and learning that appearances aren't everything - an important lesson for children in today's body-image conscious society.

Readings of the book, written by Rod Clement, were held in schools, public libraries, kindergartens, childcare centres and bookshops across the country
Over the years the idea of sharing in the reading of one book at the same time in different locations across the country has captured the imaginations and hearts of children and adults alike.

Jackie, who wrote children's favorite Diary of a Wombat, read to the whole student body while pictures were projected onto a screen.

Teacher librarian Dominique Gardiner said the Prep's laughed out loud in several spots as Jackie's storytelling skills came to the fore.  

She then spoke to the older children about her research for her historical novels, which they have been studying in literature circles. 

"Her talk was fascinating and humorous and her passion has enthused many of the children to read more of her books - and get a pet wombat," she said.