Promoting the love of reading to boost literacy

With nearly half the Australian population struggling with basic literacy for every day life, 2012 has been declared a National Year of Reading by Australia's libraries and library associations.

They are promoting all things books and reading-related in 2012 with programs and events taking place across the country and online with the aim of helping people discover or rediscover the joy of reading.

In the spirit of National Year of Reading 2012, here's a look at some of the activities going on in the near future.

Reading and counting

It is Literacy and Numeracy week, and nationwide events include:
  • Read for Australia – which occurred today at 2pm - a synchronised national reading of Aaron Blabey's Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley;
  • The Dorothea McKellar Poetry Awards, the winners of which will be announced at Gunnedah in NSW on August 31.

Feast of festivals

Turning the page, other events in the NYOR12 include the Melbourne Writers Festival which continues this week. More than 300 writers from around the world are taking part in interviews,     literary banquets, debates, readings, performances and workshops.

The Sydney Jewish Writers' Festival occurred over the weekend, featuring Australian author, columnist and mother of three Kerri Sackville. It also featured a session on how to tackle writing about the horrors of war, with authors Mark Dapin and Elliot Perlman.

The Festival of Indigenous Reading, Writing and Storytelling is on September 8 in Alice Springs. This festival is a celebration of Indigenous Literacy Day, which occurs on September 5 and will feature indigenous storytellers from the heart of Australia sharing their culture through spoken word, art and song.

There's a sample of just a few of the things going on, to find out more check out the National Year of Reading 2012 website  which has a comprehensive and regularly updated list of activities from around the country.

Oh, and if you are Sydneysider don't miss the Newtown Book Fair this Saturday raising funds for Indigenous Literacy. Have a coffee while you are there...

- Josiah Hallett

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book review: The life to come by Michelle de Krester

Image
One of the characters I most enjoyed in Michelle de Krester's The life to come is Sydney's inner west. I arrived in Newtown on a yellowy January morning in the early 1980s and lived above King St near the start of Erskinville Rd for six months before a succession of terrace houses across Newtown, Emmore and Macdonaldtown. Coming from the country to study 'Communications' I could easily have been minor character fodder for the author, momentarily shuffling by in ill-fitting jeans alongside the ubiquitous Pippa and George (that is, they are the only characters appearing in all five sections of what is an artfully decentralised narrative). I might not have done too well descriptively from de Krester's pen. She finds a way to poke holes in all of her characters, perhaps with the exception of expat Christabel who is the most downtrodden of characters, but not by the author, who otherwise sustains a mildly scornful, disapproving or comedic tone. For example, Geo
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Nowhere Child by Christian White

Image
Little Sammy Went is gone, and while The Nowhere Child tells us where fairly quickly - who, how, why and at what cost takes the rest of this fast-paced book to uncover. I use the cliche 'fast-paced' on purpose because like most genre books, except for the exceptional few, the 'fast-pace' does rely on cliches to a fair degree. Which is not to say The Nowhere Child is a poor novel. Rather it is a clever book, with more than enough periods of real tension and surprise to keep the reader turning pages (or flicking them as the case may be). Clever because it embeds just enough themes that are deemed praiseworthy and admirable in the subjective group-think world that is publishing. (That is not a criticism of the book or publishing, just a reality in these days of thought-fear.) Of course there is the obligatory references to reading and authors - we must worship at the the book altar of course. Being set in both Australia and the US may explain why at times Matth
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Choke by Sophie Laguna

Image
The Choke tells the story of a young girl raised by her war-ravaged grandfather in a beat-up house near the fictional Victorian town of Nullabri on the banks of the Murray River. Nullabri may well be located across the water from fictional Bellington and Riversend from Chris Hammer's Scrubland as we find ourselves in another rendition of dystopian rural Australia where the river (or lack of) is a silent presence. Author Sophie Laguna has again given her child heroine Justine and the other young characters a warmth and vulnerability so easily observable in children and it is part of the growing tension of the book as to how this will be ripped apart by the mostly dysfunctional adults in their lives. Or by the eroding process of simply growing up in poverty and ignorance. There is something dangerously criminal about Justine's father who is mostly absent yet longed for by Justine and her step-brothers. The depiction of his return, his dismantling of his sons' fragile
Read more + comment »