Thursday 6 March 2014

World Book Day

The Book Bus Road Show was in for a special treat today at Sonning Common Primary School! We were met at the gate by McGonagall  from Hogwarts and treated to school lunch surrounded by Spiderman, Cinderella, The Artful Dodger, Harry Potter, Wally, numerous princesses and a host of other characters from the children's favourite books. This was World Book Day in action, if only everyday at school was like this!

Today's special topic was the Galapagos Islands, Isabel from Galapagos Conservation Trust showed us where the islands are and how important it has become to conserve their unique wildlife. We discovered that the population of 30,000 islanders receive 200,000 visitors every year who come to view the wildlife and admire the spectacular island landscapes The Book Bus project on the Galapagos works with 3 schools on Santa Cruz Island to help the children improve their reading and English language skills; this will improve their future job prospects within the flourishing tourist industry where literate and bi-lingual candidates are a much sought after resource!

Our whistle stop tour of the world continued to Zambia where we made Skype contact with project coordinator Monica and the children at Musonda Community School near Kitwe. With great whoops and much smiling and waving  the children enjoyed seeing how each other's schools looked. The Book Bus gave the children at Musonda a supply of valuable books and spent the day reading and drawing with them.




 After a day in the company of so many colourful and spectacular children, Book Bus George chugged out of the playground and trundled back to base. What a great day it was!