Children and grown-ups were agog with excitement as two shelves with 400 books were gifted to the Panchayat Union Middle School (PUMS) at Navalur Kottapattu on Thursday in the third leg of ‘Spreading the Joy of Reading’, the social initiative jointly organised under the banner of the Lit Fest of The Hindu in collaboration with title sponsor G Square.
The drive aims at encouraging reading habit among young people and will be donating books to 30 schools in Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchi, and Kancheepuram.
The co-educational PUMS has a student strength of 300 and offers English and Tamil medium of instruction for Classes I to VIII. After the inauguration, children were seen eagerly thumbing through the books, which include biographies, comics, and story collections in English and Tamil.
“Reading is a basic skill that improves children’s ability to communicate with others. We selected this school out of 36 institutions in the Manikandam Block because its students have done well in exams and show promise. ‘Spreading the Joy of Reading’ is a valuable and well-deserved present to the young minds,” said R. Jayalakshmi, Block Education Officer, told The Hindu.
Headmistress S. Juliet Rubella said the initiative had led the school, founded in 1924, to launch a library for students. “We had small collection of books in Classes I and II earlier, but they were limited in scope. Receiving these books has inspired us to dedicate a separate room for the library, and include computer-based learning for all our students,” Ms. Rubella said.
“Children in rural and semi-urban areas are often unable to access reading material easily. We hope that our initiative will increase the love for books and improve literacy in the younger generation,” said R. Velmurugan, location head, G Square, Tiruchi.
Panchayat president George Fernandes spoke.
