Opening new doors to loving and caring for books

Milikapiti School on Melville Island has been receiving books from our Foundation for seven years now. And they are continuing to make a difference in the small community to the north of Darwin in the Timor Sea.

As part of the Families as First Teachers (FaFT) program, each week babies and toddlers at Milikapiti are discovering the joys of books and reading.

“Many of the parents haven’t had exposure to books themselves in their early years,” explains Suzanne Brogan, an Early Childhood Teacher at the school. “And the parents love it, showing their babies the pictures and pointing at things. It’s really opening up new doors.”

Books can be taken home by families, which has not only “promoted reading together at home” but also “highlighted the value of and promoted caring for books”.

Older children in Years 1 and 2 consistently use the Book Buzz packs in the classroom shared guided reading program and they too get to take some of the books home.

“The selection of books is awesome,” says Suzanne. “Due to the support from the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, all our families now have books in their homes, our school library has a lovely collection of books, and our classrooms have books for students and teaching staff to access.”

Milikapiti School has also been visited by some of our ambassadors in recent years to run writting and illustrating workshops, and the kids readily boast that they have met the authors of some of the books they get from the ILF Book Supply.

“‘Alison Lester is our friend,’ they say.’”

The steady supply of quality, culturally appropriate books, along with visits from popular children’s authors, has meant that the kids at Milikapiti are now “more enthralled than ever with books of all sorts”.

“I can’t recommend the ILF Book Supply enough. What the Foundation is doing is just amazing.”

• Posted 01 January, 2019