O President of the Republic Mr. Konstantinos Tasoulas inaugurated the 53rd Book Festival In the Pedion Areos, which this year is dedicated to childhood literacy, emphasizing the child’s vital familiarity with reading and book.
Mr. Tasoulas pointed out that “by giving our children books, we do not only learn to read; we learn and live” and refer particularly to the role that both parents and school play in the strengthening of childhood literacy.
He also added that “in a world that is changing at a dizzying speed, where screens blink continuously and fleeting information floods every corner of everyday life, the book always remains the steady path to the most exciting inner personal adventure.”
In particular, in his address, the President of the Republic noted:
“The theme of the 53rd Book Festival is very vital because it is about familiarizing the child with reading, book, literacy. And this familiarity is a familiarity of life and if achieved in the early years, then the partner, who is the book, of our lives will never abandon this child neither as a teenager nor as a young nor as a mature man or later in the older years of his life. The Alexandrian poet says: “He came to read. There are two open, three books; historians and poets. But just read ten minutes, and gave up. On the sofa he is half -naked. It belongs completely to the books. “
It is fully owned by the books, then. How will we achieve this? We will do this exactly with the methods, with values, with recommendations, with the suggestions, which through the parallel events of the festival you organize and create a bunch of suggestions for the child’s connection with the book. So necessary, I repeat, this connection. And if you allow me, since we have about 250 kiosks that exhibit and present books, let’s not forget that the e -book is also good, but the book you catch, the book that has a bookmark, and even a bookmark that is also an artistic book you can do, And another contact with the young man, but also with the reader regardless of age.
So I am pleased to find that the Athenian beloved institution of the Book Festival in Pedion Areos, which may also be called the Pedion Hermes for these days in September, walks close to his next fifty years. And with even more joy I see that this year it has raised as a central theme a particularly important issue that concerns us as a society: the child’s relationship with the book, in the ways in which this institution will be cultivated and deprived, creating readers who will not abandon this fertile relationship in their adult life.
In a world that is changing at dizzying speed, where screens flash continuously and fleeting information floods every corner of everyday life, the book always remains the steady path to the most exciting internal personal adventure. Mirror of the self and a window into the world, a thread that connects us to others, a source of knowledge, fantasy. Here I remember a definition of the imagination I had read in a book by Venice. Imagination wants exercise and is a cultivation. There is no imagination without education. So mirror of the self and a window into the world, a thread that connects us to others, a source of knowledge, imagination and emotional development, the book is an investment for every child for the future. It enhances concentration, critical thinking, creativity, sensitivity. He becomes a companion in loneliness, shelter and compass.
But how will the child come into contact with the book and how will this contact get fruit? The first to initiate it in this process will be his parent. Reading the child, from the most tender age, he consolidates a moment of deep communication. Introduces the child into language and meaning. In two shocking objects, language and meaning. He teaches him to love the music of words, the waving of words, to coordinate at the rhythm of speech, to wonder and to dream.
Then comes the school, the teacher, the school library – this ark of knowledge and enjoyment that as an institution in the educational process still has a lot of room for growth and improvement. We need to enhance the role of the school library further as a place of study, research, creative expression and cooperation of children. We need to organize more and better libraries in order to respond to students’ interests, to facilitate the wider school activities with their material, and to open up to the vast world of literature, cultivating philanthropy. We need, in short, a moral framework of action, to escape the logic of one book, from information (and not knowledge) only online, from the one -way approach to the dozens of questions that are born to a child, from the conveniences of modern technology, with the convenience of the modern technology, with the ease Solutions, shrinks thought.
I would like to congratulate all the contributors to this year’s book festival on the subject they chose and on how they approached it. I believe that events, discussions, speeches, round tables will contribute not only to the relevant reflection but also to the subsequent action. Because by giving our children books, we do not only learn to read them; we learn and live. And with these brief thoughts, let me preach the launch of the 53rd Book Festival, wish every success at the beginning of this second fifty years of the book Association. Warm congratulations! “