The Reading Marathon took place on March 7, as part of the group’s library activities for the Reading Week (7 to 11 March) and mobilized many students and classes of the group, with the participation of 28 classes of EBS Canelas and four schools EB1 E EB1/JI (Ribes, Alquebre, Monte and Lagarteira). We had a special participation of the school library of Cerignola, Italy, our partner of school library of Erasmus Project “, and that has in common the reading and the exploration of this famous diary. The purpose of this initiative was to value the act of reading, aware that reading is a condition for all knowledge and a guarantee for the exercise of full citizenship. We know that this literacy is fundamental for our students and, therefore, we marked a continuous reading current for nine hours.
Teachers, parents/carers, operational and technical assistants, psychologists and an Italian school, partner of a school library Erasmus project on reading and values, joined this initiative.
This reading took place in person in the main school library and remotely, through Google Meet, with the schools in the school cluster that joined the activity, with parents and guardians and with the Italian school.
Although the readers were free to choose which text to read, most of the readings were from the book “The Diary of Anne Frank”, a work which is linked to the theme of the two Erasmus projects developed by the library in partnership with libraries from other European schools.
Reading this work is always surprising, due to the genius and sensitivity of this young Jewish girl who died at the age of 15 in a concentration camp, a few months before the end of World War II. Unfortunately, the necessary approach to human rights education has again become a priority in view of the developments taking place in Ukraine. And Anne Frank’s diary has become painfully topical (if ever it stopped being topical)…
We are left with a message of hope for new, more peaceful and tolerant times. May reading also unite us in a humanitarian current.
