As if you did not know, last week was Book Week. With the theme Curious Creatures, Wild Minds, the Children's Book Council of Australia has promoted the event since 1945.
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Book Week is a time when children's literature brings us together. An event where we pause to share classics and new titles alike, and, through donning costumes, elaborate or basic it does not matter, we embrace and encourage the enjoyment that comes with reading
As the CBCA website states: "The Children's Book Council of Australia is a not for profit, volunteer run organisation which aims to engage the community with literature for young Australians. Each year, across Australia, the CBCA brings children and books together celebrating CBCA Book Week. Throughout the year, the CBCA works in partnership with authors, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and other organisations in the children's book world to bring words, images and stories into the hearts and minds of children and adults."
And since the end of World War II parents and guardians have been hyperventilating about ideas and preparation of costumes for primary school book parades with peak stress hitting at around 7pm the evening before.
What have you organised? What time is the parade? Who are your friends going as? You do understand the theme? We have left it too late ...
The questions and frustrated statements and guilt and panic continue creating all manner of hullabaloo.
But miraculously, with the support of loved ones and our children, we make it work with the promise made that we will not be so disorganised next year ... until next year comes around too quickly.
Considering all we have faced together during 2020, the socials tell me that this year's Book Week was a beauty.
There is an argument to be made that of all the states, Book Week is one of Tasmania's most important events.
Tourism Industry Council Tasmania boos Luke Martin took to Twitter to emphasis the point: "I know it's a pain for parents, but Book Week is possibly the single best thing to happen to schools since recess."
Tragically, Tasmania is as well known for illiteracy as it is national parks.
The Griffith Review of 2012 infamously highlighted that 50 per cent of Tasmanian adults were illiterate meaning that they struggle to read and write and perform functional tasks with regionally dispersed communities, intergenerational poverty, intergenerational unemployment, and a higher proportion of low-socio-economic status impacting the findings.
To address these significant issues, a continued focus on early childhood education initiatives with the support of community groups is essential.
Grade 10 can be too late. However, engagement with reading and writing and developing a love of learning can never start too early.
Launching into Learning, various testing and screening regimes, B4 Early Years Coalition, Child and Family Centres, Libraries Tasmania, kindergarten, Learning in Families Together and Education and Care provide support for our youngest learners and their families.
No state government has all the answers, nor do successive state governments bear all the responsibility.
Parents and guardians are their children's first teachers, and educators are miracle workers. Just imagine the challenges we would be facing if we were not blessed with an exemplary education army.
And that is why initiatives such as Book Week remain so desperately important.
If we are talking about books, we are focusing on literacy. If we are considering how a character is portrayed and how they would appear in real-life, we are focusing on literacy. If we are observing others and considering the books from which their characters are inspired, we are focusing on literacy. If we are carrying a book to school and posing for a photograph, we are focusing on literacy. If we are sharing a book with others, we are focusing on literacy. If we are having a discussion at home about who looked the part and why, we are focusing on literacy.
Book Week, for all its challenges from an organisational perspective, facilitates these conversations.
And it is often the simplest costumes that are the most memorable.
One of the positives to come from the COVID-19 pandemic is that educators made ground on their actual social and economic worth to the community.
From social media posts about "wine o'clock" starting far earlier and more regularly, to politicians venting about the importance of jobs and how schools must remain open to provide consistency, stability, and an opportunity for parents and guardians to work, educators were finally heralded as essential to the fabric of our communities and our way of life.
If you do not believe me, how about we just send your little charges home again.
I can still lose myself in a book.
Once upon a time it was non-fiction, even at the beach, focusing on teaching practice and improving standards that occupied my time flicking between pages.
But now it is fiction again that allows me to retreat.
And even though I still have not read a book of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, we may even consider science fiction or fantasy perhaps, at next year's Book Week.
- Brian Wightman is a former Tasmanian Attorney-General and school principal.
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